The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : A mammoth production

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Nov 22, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

A mammoth production

S.R. Ashok Kumar

The film's budget crossed Rs.100 crores

CHENNAI: Akbar Khan's "Taj Mahal"- an eternal love story, is mammoth in every sense. Its production budget crossed Rs.100 crores. The producers used 500 elephants and camels and 2,000 horses and 17,000 people for war sequences. Stunt master Shyam Koushal took away nearly one lakh feet of film for the fight sequences.

Art director Rathnakar Patke created 16 different sets at a cost of Rs. 30 crores. One lakh candles and torches were used for lighting the huge palace setting. Nearly 3,000 carpenters worked day and night to create a replica of `Taj Mahal' at a cost of Rs. 3 crores.

Its producers got some of the original copies of the Koran used by Akbar and Shah Jahan, as also a hookah and some wine glasses.

If you are a numbers freak, look at some of the things that went into making the movie. Fifteen thousand litres of paint and colours, 15,000 nails, 700 tons of plaster, 3 lakh sq.ft. of wood, 2 lakh planks, 1.5 lakh silk cloth pieces, 20 diamond crowns, 100 cannons, 5,000 swords, 3,000 small knives, 3,000 head gears, 1,000 women dresses, 3,500 pairs of footwear, hundreds of diamond necklaces and diamond rings, 200 suits of body armour, 40 silk carpets; the whole film was shot with 4 lakh ft of negative film. Kabir Bedi acts as old Shah Jahan and Manisha Koirala as his daughter Jahanara Begum. The title role of Mumtaz is played by a new find Sonia Jehan, the grand daughter of singer Noorjahan. Singer S.P. Balasubramaniam has dubbed for the title character Shah Jahan in the Tamil version of `Taj Mahal'.

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