Rang De Basanti producers asked actors to return their salary because they weren’t sure of its success, recalls Soha Ali Khan: ‘All of us gave money back’

Soha Ali Khan recalled her memories of shooting Rang De Basanti with the entire ensemble cast, who at the time were a tightly knit group, but now, she says, they haven’t spoken to each other in what feels like a lifetime.

By: Entertainment Desk

Mumbai | September 4, 2025 08:16 PM IST

4 min read

Few films have left a mark like Rang De Basanti

Soha Ali Khan revealed that the producers of Rang De Basanti almost didn’t believe in the film.

Rang De Basanti, as it’s known today, is a generation-defining film, the kind of film that, as many would argue, couldn’t be made in today’s time. But when it released back in 2006, nearly two decades ago, it wasn’t just loved, it became a phenomenon that challenged a generation to reflect, question, and act. It changed the lives of all the actors associated with it. However, Soha Ali Khan, who was still very new to the industry back when she signed and shot the film, revealed in a recent conversation that the producers were not certain that the film would make any money, despite Aamir’s presence. In fact, they were so unsure of its box office potential that they asked the actors to return a percentage of their remuneration.

She shared with Zoom, “Nobody anticipated it making the kind of money it did, or touching people the way that it did. In fact, when we were promoting the film, the producers called and said, ‘Can you return some of the money we’ve given you? Because we’re not sure this film is going to do well.’ All of us gave money back. We were like, ‘Okay, maybe, sure.’ But that film became a movement. And for me, it was a turning point in my career — something that I feel will always stand out in my journey.” She also recalled shooting the film with that iconic ensemble cast, which featured top-rate artists like Aamir Khan, R. Madhavan, Siddharth, Sharman Joshi, Alice Patten, Atul Kulkarni, among others.

Also Read | ‘Aamir Khan gave away the climax of Rang De Basanti to Siddharth,’ says Kunal Kapoor: ‘Anyone else would have said I’m the hero but…’

“We shot for about a year. We travelled all over India, in Punjab, Rajasthan, Delhi, Mumbai. It was a very close-knit crew and cast. We would often wait for hours because Binod Pradhan, our cinematographer, would take his time, and rightly so, to light a shot. Sometimes it would take many, many hours, even half a day. So we ended up spending a lot of time together as a unit. Friendships were made, at the time we thought, ‘we’ll be friends forever’ — but now it feels like we haven’t spoken in a lifetime, which I later realized is something that just happens,” she said.

More recently, Aamir Khan shared that initially, filmmaker Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra had envisioned a very different climax, one where the protagonists kill the Defence Minister and attempt to escape the city, only to die at different locations. But Aamir wasn’t convinced. In a video (from YouTube channel Cinemaanreal), Aamir revealed how he changed the film’s climax, replacing it with one based on a story he had written years earlier. “I had this story I had written many years ago. In my version there were two guys… it reached a situation where they need to communicate with society. So they enter a television studio and take over. They go live so they can start talking to the people. I took that and told Mehra that I had this story and I will now not make it because the climax is gone… But he liked it and we fitted that climax scene into Rang De Basanti.”

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