Director Sriram Raghavan opened up about the process of filming two versions of his upcoming thriller, Merry Christmas, back-to-back. Sriram first shot the film in Hindi, and then, mainly to mitigate escalating costs, shot a modified version in Tamil. He addressed the dryness that had set into the crew when they started work on the Tamil film, and said that the process was particularly ‘torturous’ for Katrina Kaif, who even suggested that he cast a different actor in her place.
In an interview with Galatta Plus, Sriram said that they’d erected a set for the film, which went unused for several months because of scheduling conflicts. This escalated the film’s budget, which was a source of stress for the filmmaker, who’d envisioned it as a relatively small-scale project. “The rewriting continued till the last day. When Vijay Sethupathi came in, it was still a Hindi film. But during the second wave, we’d built a set, but for three months we couldn’t shoot because Katrina’s dates were clashing with Tiger and Vijay was also not free… So, 70% of the set was done, but we were prohibited from shooting, so we had to bring (the set) down. Costs were going up, but nothing was on screen,” he said.
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Sriram continued, “Then I had this ‘kill two birds with one stone’ idea. If I make a Tamil film also, maybe that would (mitigate) costs. So, then the only person to really convince was Katrina. She had to go through this little bit of a torture process. But she eventually agreed. She was still hoping that you do one film in Hindi with me, and take another girl instead (for the Tamil version). But I said, ‘No, you try and manage’.”
In a previous interview, the filmmaker had said that he’d shot the Hindi version first before beginning work on the Tamil version, and that they didn’t shoot it simultaneously. He told Film Companion, “For me, this is a very intimate, one-night story. Suddenly, I’m finding that it is becoming more and more, it’s taking time… I felt we’d spent a little more than we should. (Calling it) the ‘most expensive low-budget film’ makes a lot of sense to me.” Merry Christmas will be released in theatres on Friday.
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Katrina Kaif went through ‘torture process’ doing Tamil version of Merry Christmas, told Sriram Raghavan to ‘take another girl’ instead – The Indian Express
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