Dil Chahta Hai - Production

Production

The movie is partially based on writer-director Farhan Akhtar's diaries on his trips to Goa, his 1996 month-and-a-half long stay at New York, and a storyline narrated to him by a friend. Farhan Akhtar began work on the film's script in 1998; the relationship of the characters Akash and Shalini was based on a similar experience of one of Akhtar's friends. Other parts of the film were adapted from Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. Aamir Khan was initially offered the role of Sid, but he elected to play the role of Akash, for which he grew a soul patch. Abhishek Bachchan was also offered the role of Sid in the film. After he turned it down, Akshaye Khanna accepted the part. Akhtar convinced actress Dimple Kapadia to come out of retirement to play the role of divorcée Tara Jaiswal. After 15 months of extensive pre-production, the film was shot over a four month period in Mumbai and Sydney, Australia.

The film's style extended to the music and its picturisation in the movie. One song sequence recapitulates, and to some extent, parodies Bollywood song-and-dance history. Other songs drop the usual dance accompaniment — one song depicts an argument between two protagonists through the song's lyrics, another establishes the character's state of mind through a moody photo collage, while yet another imagines the beautiful and idealised world of an artist in love through a song inside a painting. There is also an extended opera sequence at the Sydney Opera House, which was exclusively commissioned for the film.