I’m a hardcore cinema guy, I have never done theatre in my life and here I am trying to pull off the craziest ambition of my life. “I’m terribly nervous and incredibly excited. 26 years later I will be directing DDLJ all over again but this time as an English language Broadway musical for a worldwide audience.” But this time the medium is not cinema but theatre. “26 years later I’m going back to my original vision of the story of DDLJ, a love story of an American boy and an Indian girl, a love story of two cultures… two worlds. It gave me my identity and kickstarted an amazing journey for which I’ll always be grateful.” DDLJ released in 1995 and became the longest running film of Indian cinema. As a 23-year-old young man greatly influenced by Hollywood and American pop culture, I thought I would make a couple of Indian films and then I would be off to Hollywood and make DDLJ for a worldwide English speaking audience with Tom Cruise as my leading man. But what many don’t know is that I never intended to make DDLJ in Hindi. The film created history and changed my life and many others forever. 26 years back I started my career with a film called ‘Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge’ (DDLJ, what it is more famously known as). “I’m reuniting two long lost lovers, Broadway Musical and Indian Films.
“Autumn 2021… I’m embarking on my most ambitious project till date,” Chopra added. I realised then, that worlds apart, languages apart, western musical theatre and Indian films are two long lost lovers separated in time.” It filled me with the same joy and emotions that a good Indian film does. The burst of colors, the heightened drama, the passionate singing, the unabashed dancing, a classic story, a happy end. It was just not the fact that both use songs to tell the story, it was much more than that, it was the feeling they evoked which was exactly the same. But the most significant aspect that resonated with me was how similar musical theatre was to our Indian films. I couldn’t believe that this kind of spectacle could be created live on stage.
But that day what I saw on stage blew my mind.
Now, till then, I was a kid who was an avid movie watcher and what I loved the most was big screen Indian blockbusters. “The lights dimmed, the curtains lifted and what unfolded in the next three hours left me speechless and stunned. My parents took my brother and me for our first musical theatre experience,” Chopra wrote. A global casting search headed by Duncan Stewart of Stewart/Whitley casting and Yash Raj Films casting head Shanoo Sharma will begin imminently.Ĭhopra shared a note on the process that led to the musical. “Come Fall In Love – The DDLJ Musical” will debut in the Broadway season of 2022-2023, with a world premiere at the Old Globe theater in San Diego in Sept. Adam Zotovich serves as executive producer. Music supervision is from Tony, Grammy and Emmy Award-winning Bill Sherman (“In The Heights,” “Hamilton”). This project aims to vindicate Bollywood as a complex artistic expression that privileges an emotional reality over a mimetic reality.Leading Indian songwriters Vishal Dadlani and Shekhar Ravjiani will serve as composers. To further illustrate Bollywood as a style, the project analyzes Bollywood’s stylistic influences outside of India, including readings of television shows Smash and Glee, and films Moulin Rouge! (2001), Strictly Ballroom (1992), and Chicago (2002). Close analysis of these films shows an aesthetic of melodrama that applies not only to the narrative of the films but more noticeably and importantly to the filmic style of the narrative and the subsequent themes that emerge. The aspects explored are the development of Bollywood style from 1995 to the mid 2000s as exhibited by the films Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995), Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998), and Dhoom (2004), and a subsequent development of a reflexive neo-Bollywood style beginning in the mid-2000s, exhibited by the films Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi (2008), Dhoom 2 (2006), and Chennai Express (2013). The purpose of this project is to redefine the word "Bollywood" as more than a regional or cultural cinema, focusing instead on the unique style of the films that is often neglected or dismissed by film critics.