Delhi Belly’s Akshat Verma Part-1
By kamla bhatt • Nov 24th, 2011Category: Bollywood, Diaspora, Entertainment, Featured, Los Angeles, People
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This year’s Bollywood film “Delhi Belly” was an unusual success. Tthe film was in English, which is a big departure since most Bollywood films are in Hindi. And then there was the fact that the screenplay writer cum associate director and director were making their debut in Bollywood. But, backing this film was a successful actor/director/producer Aamir Khan and that appears to have made a big difference explains Akshat Verma, who wrote the screenplay and was associate director of “Delhi Belly.” Abhinay Deo, the director and Ram Sampat, the music director were well-known in the ad film space, but not in Bollywood.
Akshat takes us behind the scenes and shares how Bollywood’s “Delhi Belly” was made. He wrote the screenplay over 15 years ago as a student at UCLA, but very few people showed an interest in his script in Bollywood. Plus, Akshat lived and worked in Los Angeles, and was far removed from Mumbai, the epicenter of Bollywood film industry. But lady luck must have been smiling on Akshat the day Aamir Khan discovered his wife Kiran Rao laughing over a script she had pulled out from a pile of scripts on his table. That is how Aamir Khan discovered the script and and decided to make a film. “Aamir is a risk taker and will stick his neck out when he has an instict,” says Akshat.
Getting the green signal from Aamir to make “Delhi Belly,”was the easy part. They struggled for nearly a year to find the right cast and crew that finally included Aamir Khan in a cameo role. The rest is history as they say. ”Delhi Belly” was released in English along with a dubbed Hindi version and did well at the box-office. The film is available in Netflix in the USA.
Photo Credit: Rakhee Yadav
Kamla Bhatt is the host and producer of an Internet Radio show where listeners can find stories about the new and emerging India and the global Indian community. As a pioneer of 'internet radio' format in India Kamla started her first show News about India, followed by TalkNewsIndia in 2005. In 2006 she premiered her new show: The Kamla Bhatt Show: Life, People and Ideas. 
[...] can check out Part-1 of our conversation with Akshat, where he talks about how Aamir Khan discovered his screenplay and how [...]