Filmmaker Ayan Mukerji's highly anticipated film of the year, Brahmastra Part One: Shiva starring Ranbir Kapoor and Alia Bhatt, is finally releasing on Friday, 9 September. Touted to be one of Bollywood's most aspirational projects, the film is a fantasy-adventure love story, based on Indian mythology. Being a pan-Indian film, Brahmastra Part One: Shiva will also be released in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam. The film also stars Amitabh Bachchan, Nagarjuna Akkineni, and Mouni Roy among others in pivotal roles.
Here's all you need to know about what went behind the 10-year-long journey of Brahmastra:
The ideation of Brahmastra began in 2011, when Mukerji was on a writing trip in Shimla, working on the script of his second film Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani. His first feature film Wake Up Sid starring Ranbir had also released around the same time.
Brahmastra had been in the making for over 5 years since then. Mukerji shared in a number of interviews that he always felt a very powerful energy and strong spirituality in the mountains, hence the vision of brahmastra was born from the energy of the Himalayas.
Brahmastra was first announced in 2014, a year after the release of Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani. Mukerji had also started the pre-production of the film. However, Ranbir delayed his preparation for Brahmastra for the release of his 2018 film Sanju.
The film was initially slated for its release in December 2016. However, it was delayed by several years. In October 2017, the makers again made the announcement of the film's release in August 2019, which was soon pushed to Christmas 2019, due to pending work on the film's VFX and music.
Ranbir and Alia started working on Brahmastra in 2017. The film's preparation re-started in 2018 in full swing. The principal photography of Brahmastra Part One: Shiva, began with the commencement of its first schedule in February 2018, which wrapped up in Bulgaria in March 2018.
In the same month, Mukerji had revealed in his Instagram post, that Brahmastra was initially titled 'Dragon' and Ranbir's character Shiva was called Rumi. Sharing a picture of Ranbir in his long hair, the filmmaker wrote on his social media post, "We gave Ranbir a haircut, and Rumi became...Shiva."
The second schedule of the shoot continued in Bulgaria, then in London on 8 July 2018, in New York in late July, and then back in Bulgaria by the end of the month. The extensive shooting of the film started in February 2019 at Edinburgh, Scotland.
The 20-day schedule of the film started in the Ramnagar and Chet Singh Forts of Varanasi on in July 2019. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the shooting was halted in March 2020, which later resumed in November 2020.
In March-April 2021, the shooting for Brahmastra was again cancelled, after Ranbir tested COVID-positive. The makers also wanted to shoot a song with a large number of junior artists around the same time, but couldn't do so, since shootings weren't allowed to be crowded as per the COVID-19 protocols.
On 15 December 2021, the makers of the film unveiled the first look poster of Ranbir from Brahmastra Part One: Shiva.
On 29 March 2022, in Varanasi, the cast finally wrapped up shooting for the first part of the Brahmastra trilogy.
The film's teaser was released on 31 May 2022, followed by its official trailer on 15 June, which gave the viewers an insight of Mukerji's intriguing Astraverse.
Brahmastra's music also garnered a lot of praise only within the few days of release. 'Kesariya' sung by Arijit Singh was released on 17 July and 'Deva Deva' was released on 8 August. While the third song, 'Dance Ka Bhoot' was recently released on 25 August.
Roy, who plays an antagonist in the fantasy flick, recently revealed in her interview on 1 September, that Shah Rukh Khan also has a cameo in Brahmastra Part One: Shiva.
Lastly, Brahmastra Part One: Shiva is all set for its pan-India theatrical release on Friday, 9 September.
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