Ali Abbas Zafar reveals Bade Miyan Chote Miyan shoot cost per day was Rs 3-4 cr, blew up cars worth Rs 30-40 lakh for stunts: ‘Very ambitious’

Bade Miyan Chote Miyan is reportedly mounted on a humongous budged of Rs 350 crore. When asked how he convinced the Bhagnanis (Pooja Entertainment) to back a project so big, he said he needed someone who would believe in his vision “blindly” and once the Bhagnanis were on board, he took it up as a personal responsibility to “execute” it diligently.

He says, “When we wrote the script, the vision for the film was that we create something that all of us are proud of. When you create an action set, your intention is not to make it expensive. There are certain stories that demand a certain budget. From the beginning, we knew that what we were trying to do was very ambitious, not only in terms of the money spent but also the kind of vision we wanted to achieve. For that, we needed a producer who blindly believes in you and also trusts you, because this involves going to real locations, using real equipment, real military support and real stunt team to execute something that looks closer to reality.”

 

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Ali then got into the nitty gritty of what goes behind making a film on real location and why he follows old-school techniques while using VFX sparingly as opposed to VFX heavy actioners that are common. He said, “When, in a film, you use the word ‘real’ it doesn’t mean that it is happening in front of you in reality; it is to do with the way you are conditioning the audience that they really feel that they are in the middle of that situation. For that, you have to use VFX as a support tool. You can’t use VFX as a main tool and then try to make everything on computer graphics. So we were very clear that whatever we do in the film, we’ll do it in a way how films were shot earlier.”

“If there is an action sequence on bikes, you will see Akshay and Tiger on bikes. If some death-defying stunts is being shot, it will be done by stunt performers because you can’t risk your main actors’ lives, but if there is an explosion there will be a live explosion we will enhance it in VFX,” he added.

Ali also opened up on why they decided to shoot the film in Saudi Arabia and Jordan and not in India. He said, “As the film involves special forces, there was a huge military support which we needed. We went to countries which were giving us that kind of support because to shoot in real military bases is a nightmare; if there is an emergency, you could get a hard stop. So when we scouted locations in India and abroad, we chose the places where we can shoot with full freedom as the equipment we used was so expensive that if anything wrong happens, it can’t be compensated with money. So, these were the primary reasons to execute it in a way that it looks real and it is impactful.”

 

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With big budgets, comes even bigger pressure to deliver. Ali says there were days when the shoot of Bade Miyan Chote Miyan costed them around Rs 3-4 crore and they blew up cars worth Rs 30- 40 lakh during rehearsals to make sure that the final action sequence has an impact.

Talking about the pressure, he said, “Budget is the biggest pressure that the actors and the makers of the film always feel because today when you want your product to look international, classy and at a level where people say it’s a visual spectacle, you need to spend that much money. If you want to do bike stunts and each bike costs Rs 4 lakh and if the stunt goes wrong, your immediately lose Rs 4 lakh. If you are blowing up a car which is worth Rs 30-40 lakh and if the stunt doesn’t go as planned, straightaway lose that much money. There are stunts in Bade Miyan Chote Miyan where the spend on one day was Rs 3-4 crores — with all the paraphernalia and all the technicians of all the choppers — everything together was very expensive.”

He recalled, “On those expensive days, we were all under tremendous pressure — whether it was Akshay sir or me or Tiger or even the producer. So we would continuously wonder if we’ll even be able to make it, will there be the right sunlight to shoot, hopefully there won’t be rain. So you plan it meticulously and there are hard rehearsals, so you execute a stunt perfectly! This involves months of rehearsals before you execute the actual stunt, for which you again buy those cars — maybe they are not super expensive cars, then you blow them up; then you put your camera angles, then you execute again. Action is a genre, which requires money to be spent continuously and in a large amount. So it definitely puts you in a hot seat with a lot of pressure,” Ali concluded.

Ali’s Bade Miyan Chote Miyan is scheduled to release in theatres on Eid, on April 1o. The action thriller also stars Sonakshi Sinha, Manushi Chhillar and Aklaya F.