Uday Chopra reveals Hrithik Roshan helped name Shah Rukh Khan-starrer Darr, here’s how. Watch

The romantic thriller Darr will complete 30 years of release later this year. The Hindi film, starring Juhi Chawla, Sunny Deol and Shah Rukh Khan, was released before Christmas on December 24, 1993. It went to become a big hit, and had picked up 10 nominations at the Filmfare awards the next year. Uday Chopra, in an old conversation with his father, filmmaker Yash Chopra, had revealed that it was him and his friend, actor Hrithik Roshan, who had inspired the production of the film. Furthermore, Hrithik had also helped name the film after his own amateur film production. (Also read: Hrithik Roshan recalls he was ‘on verge of depression’: I thought I was dying when I was doing War)

A Twitter user shared a short clip of the conversation between Uday and his father Yash. In it, Uday is informing him about how the film was inspired by an 1989 Australian feature starring Sam Neill, Nicole Kidman and Billy Zane.

The thriller is set at sea and revolves around grieving couple who takes in a stranger after his ship sinks. The film was released before Nicole became a big Hollywood star and she uses her natural Australian accent in it.

In the conversation, Uday recalls, “The fact about Darr, the way it started off is Hrithik and me were seeing a movie once, a very less known movie called Dead Calm. We saw the video of the film and decided to make Adi [his brother, Aditya Chopra] see it, just to show it’s a very good film. Adi saw the film and he loved it instantly. That is the inspiration for Darr that actually came about.”

He added, “In fact, the title Darr is the title that Hrithik had kept for a movie that he had actually made, an amateur film that he had shot. It was Hrithik’s title and Adi when he decided on making this film, he told Hrithik that I am going to use this title because it suits very well.”

Before Hrithik became an actor, he was a child artiste in his family’s home productions and have assisted his father Rakesh Roshan on Khudgarz (1987), King Uncle (1993), Karan Arjun (1995) and Koyla (1997), a majority of which had starred Shah Rukh. A longer version of the interview between Uday and Yash can be found on Yash Raj Films’ YouTube channel.