Fifty-four vanity vans, thirty-four actors, two hundred stars’ staff, two hundred automobiles… Can producer Firoz Nadiadwala and director Ahmed Khan recover the massive investment in this week’s comedy release Welcome To The Jungle?
The estimated budget for the Bollywood action-comedy movie Welcome to the Jungle is between ₹250 to ₹300 crore. This massive budget is largely attributed to its sprawling, star-studded ensemble cast and an extravagant promotional run, which notably included a ₹1.5 crore set for the trailer launch.
Despite the massive budget, the makers are recovering a significant chunk of their investments through pre-sales, including a reported ₹120 crore deal for OTT, satellite, and audio rights
Director Ahmed Khan has unveiled the massive, town-like operational scale of his upcoming mega-ensemble comedy, Welcome to the Jungle. Helming a project featuring 34 actors simultaneously, Khan described the production logistics as nothing short of an entire mini-town built over a single massive set.
“It wasn’t easy to bring together and direct such a vast cast, and we are talking about thirty-four principal actors. It is a massive ensemble cast including stars like Akshay Kumar, Suniel Shetty, Paresh Rawal, Raveena Tandon, Lara Dutta, and Jacqueline Fernandez. Personal staffs, managers, and assistants brought the core actor unit up to roughly hundred and fifty people daily. Fifty-four vanity vans parked in a dedicated zone alongside VIP rooms and specialized tents. A massive fleet of cars used exclusively for moving the actors and core unit members. The sprawling film set functioned essentially as its own independent township. When adding crew members, background dancers, fighters, horses, and junior artists, the set footprint peaked at nearly nine hundred people a day.”
Ahmed says the impossible scale of Welcome To The Jungle worked out due to the team spirit which prevailed on the sets. “The shooting was completely problem-free. Every actor arrived on set with the mindset of ensuring they wouldn’t be the ones responsible for creating a delay. Hats off to our producer, Firoz Nadiadwala’s brilliant logistical management and execution for keeping the massive multi-acre camp functional. My own past experiences as a professional choreographer gave me an advantage, as I was already well-versed in coordinating groups of 200+ dancers and dozens of actors simultaneously on complex stages.”
Ahmed Khan feels it is not about how much you spend, but how well you manage a project. “I don’t know about other projects. But we made sure not a penny was wasted during the making of Welcome To The Jungle.”
