Himesh Reshammiya’s ‘The Xpose’ has been inspired by Meena Kumari's ‘Pakeezah’

Mumbai: Makers of musician-actor Himesh Reshammiya-starrer ‘The Xpose’ which is set to be released on May 16, said here today that the movie has “exposed” various Bollywood “secrets” from the 1960s and 1970s.

One scene in ‘The Xpose’ is related to the 1972 movie called ‘Pakeezah’ which starred the late actress Meena Kumari but flopped at the box office initially.

However, the movie went on to become a superhit later after the demise of its leading lady Meena Kumari, two weeks after its release.

Makers of ‘The Xpose’ claimed that ‘Pakeezah’ which flopped initially became a hit after its director Kamal Amrohi got actress Padma Khanna to dub Meena Kumari’s voice and released a tape as the late actress’ “last recorded message” to drive fans’ sympathy, which eventually worked as expected.

“We have some really interesting intriguing real life stories from Bollywood. It was an interesting incident that happened after Meena Kumari’s death. Director Kamal Amrohi made Padma Khanna dub in Meena Kumari’s voice and released it later to fans, which helped his film,” director of ‘The Xpose’ Anant Mahadevan said.

“We have a similar scene, where producers release an actress’ last recording, which was actually recorded by the dubbing artiste,” the National award-winning director said.

Anant Mahadevan claimed that he has tried to weave in many such interesting and unknown facts of various actors’ lives to make the movie’s plot interesting.

“The film’s story is from the 1960s when the media wasn’t so aggressive and only two magazines used to have all this inside information regarding the industry. We have done our research and tried to put together all intriguing facts together within a story,” Anant said.