Sushant Singh Rajputs space film moves from the US to UK for budgetary reasons

26 Oct 2017

In 2017, Bollywood faces one of its worst economic crises ever, what with films falling like ninepins. Besides Baahubali which is a blockbuster beyond Bollywood, and Akshay Kumar s Toilet Ek Prem Katha and David Dhawans Judwaa 2 , most of the releases this year, have underperformed. Facing a red-hot recession, Eros International has decided to move its lavish space drama Chanda Mama Door Ke from the US to England, a decision that almost brought the project to a screeching halt even before shooting started. Says a well-informed source, Sushant Singh Rajput who plays an astronaut was keen to shoot the film at NASA and other parts of the US. In fact director Sanjay Chauhan had written the script keeping NASA in mind. Sushant went to NASA in October to train for his role at his expense. After all this pre-shooting preparation when Eros indicated it might pull the plug, Sushant and Chauhan were livid. They wanted to close down the film rather than compromise on the location. But now a compromise has apparently been worked out. The films director and leading man have conceded to the re-location apparently on condition that London/England be identified in the film as America. And no harm in that if you think about the fact that Kabir Khan shot New York in Phildelphia and Sanjay Leela Bhansali passed off Prague in HumDil De Chuke Sanam as Italy. Coming back to the shift in location for Chanda Mama Door Ke, a source says, Sushant and his director have accepted the re-location as a symptom of the current recession in Bollywood. With Sushants recent films not doing well, Eros had no choice but to scale down the budget. They had either the choice of shutting down the project or moving to a more budget-friendly location.