Was Scheduled to Shoot ‘Takht’ In Italy, Spain Reveals Karan Johar

Karan Johar says that the loss to the entertainment industry due to the lockdown is monumental.

Karan Johar speaks about how the lockdown has affected the shooting of his next film Takht. 

(Photo Courtesy: Instagram; Twitter)

In a video chat with film journalist Rajeev Masand, filmmaker Karan Johar revealed how his schedule for his next ambitious period film, Takht, had been affected due to the coronavirus pandemic and the resultant lockdown. While saying that the schedule and release of his film were the least of his worries in the current situation, Karan said that he was scheduled to start shooting in April.

“We were beginning our shoot on the 24th of April, for that we had to put up sets in March, which we had to completely stop, because we realised things were completely going all over and we needed to contain every kind of situation at that point of time, so we had to pull the stops on all our set construction. Our first schedule was on 24 of April, we were shooting with Vicky and Bhumi and then Ranveer was joining in on the 1st of May with Anil Kapoor and Kareena and Janhvi. Alia was shooting with us in the end of May and June. The entire cast was coming together, we were reading, we had done a look test on the 9th of March with all the three men in the film. I wanted to see Anil and Ranveer and Vicky in one frame. And then we were shooting with the girls the week after and then everything just got cancelled,” Karan said.

The filmmaker also said that Italy and Spain were the two international locations they were planning to shoot at.

“Two of our major locations for Takht internationally were Italy and Spain. We had a palace in Florence that we were shooting in, that had beautiful Mughal architecture, and we were shooting for about 25 days in that palace. And then we were shooting in Italy at Bari and we were shooting at Seville, we had recced this for two years, pre-production on Takht has been going on for 2-and-a-half years.”

Karan Johar, Filmmaker

While speaking on the subject of how the current lockdown had affected the film industry, Karan Johar said that he did not have a release date for his next two films Suryavanshi and Gunjan Saxena. Karan said that 7 or 8 films at Dharma Productions were on hold right now and that every studio would be facing a similar situation, apart from which they had no idea when things would get back to normal. Though he said he couldn’t put a figure to it, Karan stated that the loss to the entertainment industry due to the lockdown is monumental.

When Alia Bhatt joined the chat, Karan admitted that he hadn’t really tapped Alia’s talent fully in Student of the Year. “I totally short-changed Alia in Student of the Year, I didn’t use her for her talent at all. Her real professional launch was Imtiaz Ali’s Highway, the way he nurtured her as an actor and the way he put her out there is something I didn’t do at all. I don’t ever feel that I have full fledged-ly directed Alia Bhatt in the way that I want to. I still believe she and I have a film to make that we can be known for, defined with, I really don’t think I have leveraged this volcano of talent that we now know,” admitted Karan.

And finally, when asked what films or TV shows he was watching during self-isolation, Karan said, “I’ve been watching the second season of Sex Education, which I love, it’s on Netflix. I’ve been watching Elite, which is guilty pleasure viewing, it’s a Spanish show which I love. I’m also watching a documentary called Tiger King, which is amazing. I’m also watching some Telugu films that I had to watch, which is the producer in me watching it for potential remake.”

You can watch the entire video chat with Karan Johar and Alia Bhatt here: