Kunal Nayyar and Sendhil Ramamurthy as Hyderabadi brothers in their next

The shooting for a movie, that took the director seven years to put together, finally started in Hyderabad last week. Talking about the shoot, Aditya says, “We tried to keep it quiet as this is just the first part of our schedule. Kunal and Sendhil play brothers from a very wealthy Hyderabadi family in the film, where one is an overachiever and the other is a laid back guy. Although we shot mostly indoors, I didn’t want to recreate a set and that’s why we shot at a house in Hyderabad. Tollywood film director Jayanth Paranji and his wife, Archie, helped us find the perfect location for our shoot that was Riyaz Rahimtullah’s home in Banjara Hills. In fact, Jayanth who has never acted in his life, also has a role in the film. We also shot a drive-through scene from Kunal’s point of view right from the airport, Hussain sagar, Filmnagar to the old city.”

In 2012, there was news about Rana Daggubati having been selected to play the lead in the film. But for various reasons, that didn’t work out and Aditya explains why, “Both Rana and I were excited to work on the film together, but things just didn’t work out in our favour. He was very committed to the project and I certainly hope to work with him soon.

"It was initially supposed to be an Indo-American film but it's now completely a Hollywood film. Kunal and Sendhil are the two most popular Indian actors in the American media and that's one of the
reasons why I approached them," says Aditya.

The 25-crore budget film is rumoured to be a remake of the Aamir Khan-starrer Raakh directed by Aditya himself but the director says,

"This is the 25th year of Raakh and it's more of an inspiration from Raakh."

Aditya, who is the grandson of legendary filmmaker Bimal Roy and the son of filmmaker Basu Bhattacharya, is Mumbai-based but decided that the story of this film, that is very close to his heart, should be
based out of Hyderabad. He says, "Hyderabad has more of an American connect than any other city in the country. Yet, Hyderabadis have a very strong consciousness of their roots. Hyderabad has two different
worlds residing in the same city, with the charm of the Old City and the magnificence of the Hitec city. I wanted to incorporate this in my film."

The crew had a blast shooting in the city, says the director. "Hyderabad is a very important part of the content. Both Kunal and Sendhil were even more glad to be in the city right before Id and were excited to have haleem," says Aditya.