The suspense thriller is a remake of the 2020 Telugu hit of the same name and is directed by Sailesh Kolanu, who had also helmed the original film.

'HIT'?(Homicide Intervention Team) narrates the story of Vikram, a cop played by Rao, who is on the trail of a missing woman while he struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder. The film also stars actress Sanya Malhotra.

Rao, a trained martial artist, said he had a lot of fun doing the action in 'HIT'.

“Nobody has given me action to do before ‘HIT’. I thoroughly enjoyed it. The action is real, organic, and raw. This is a film I am proud of, it is presenting me in a different avatar. It is a good investigative thriller,” the actor told reporters here at the trailer launch of the film.

Rao, whose 2010 black comedy 'Judgementall Hai Kya'?also addressed mental health issues, said he hopes 'HIT'?starts a much-needed conversation in this direction. “People don’t realize they are going through something like that. So, it is important to have that conversation. I am glad that through our film we might have a beginning of that conversation. Like, how ‘Badhaai Do’ was a fun film but towards the last 20 minutes you see the pain the characters go through. Same here the character is carrying that baggage throughout the film…” he added.

Kolanu said his vision was to make a cop universe through 'HIT'. “Like in Telugu, we have made a second case and we plan to make it in Hindi too. I want to create a cop universe. My vision is to bring all the officers together. There will be subsequent cases through personal arcs and we will work with Raj and Sanya. The intention is to make it into a huge cop universe where the boundaries are blurred,” the filmmaker said.

“With this film, the journey has started. Like this is ‘HIT’ the first case, then there is the second case,” added Rao.

For the Hindi adaptation, Kolanu said he ensured to not make the exact copy of his own Telugu film. “It was a conscious effort to not make it copy and paste. The soul of the film is the same. It is my vision so we didn’t want to copy it but recreate it and make it big. We unlearnt and tried our best to make it a fresh film,” he said.

Malhotra said she is excited to have a theatrical release after quite some time. Her last theatrical release was 'Photograph', which hit the screens in 2019. Her recent films were released on streamers. “I am excited about the film. As an audience, I am excited to see myself on a bigger screen. OTT is nice but there’s a different joy of (watching films in) theatres,” she said.

Produced by Bhushan Kumar, Dil Raju, Krishan Kumar, and Kuldeep Rathore, “HIT – The First Case” is scheduled for a July 15 release.?

[With Inputs from PTI]