page_title: Dil Dhadakne Do
section_title: Development
hierarchical_section_title: Dil Dhadakne Do / Production / Development
caption_attribution_description: English: Zoya Akhtar at the Audio release of Talaash, Oct 2012
context_page_description: Dil Dhadakne Do is a 2015 Indian Hindi-language comedy-drama film directed by Zoya Akhtar, and produced by Ritesh Sidhwani and Farhan Akhtar. The film features an ensemble cast of Anil Kapoor, Shefali Shah, Priyanka Chopra, Ranveer Singh, Anushka Sharma and Farhan Akhtar, with a voice-over performance by Aamir Khan as the family dog Pluto, the narrator of the film. The supporting cast also includes Rahul Bose, Zarina Wahab, Vikrant Massey, Pawan Chopra, Parmeet Sethi, Dolly Mattdo and Manoj Pahwa. The film tells the story of the Mehras, a dysfunctional Punjabi family who invite their family and friends on a cruise trip to celebrate the parents' 30th wedding anniversary and later reconcile.
  Akhtar conceived the film as a family drama centred on a brother-sister relationship. She wanted to depict a more realistic sibling relationship in contrast to the dubious and over-the-top portrayal for which Bollywood is known. Akhtar later co-wrote the screenplay with her friend and longtime collaborator Reema Kagti.
context_section_description: When Excel Entertainment announced its upcoming films in March 2012, one of them was Zoya Akhtar's next film following Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (2011). It was reported that she was working on a script and that filming was due to start in December 2012. Akhtar dismissed the reports, saying she was yet to start writing her next script. In May that year, media reports suggested Akhtar was already writing her next film. That July, it was reported the script was about siblings partially based on Akhtar and her brother Farhan Akhtar. Farhan Akhtar later denied reports of the film being autobiographical, saying it had nothing to do with their real life relationship and that it is entirely a work of fiction. In November 2012, Akhtar said she was still writing the script and that the film was a family drama.
  Akhtar co-wrote the screenplay with her long-time friend and collaborator Reema Kagti. Akhtar had always aspired to make a family drama with a brother-sister relationship at its core. She felt such topics not been well represented in Indian films, and that the brother-sister relationship bond has always been shown "wrapped in rituals" and never portrayed as it really is. She believed the theme of brother-sister relationships "generally have cheesy representations. They are never at ease. This is one of the most important relationships in the world because nobody else shares your parents. I wanted to show that relationship in Dil Dhadakne Do". Akhtar also wanted to showcase the quirkiness of a dysfunctional family, with different layers to each family member, saying, "the beauty of families lies in their flaws".
  When asked whether the film had any similarities with her own life and family, she said it had none and that the only thing common to herself and the film's characters was the bond between her and her brother; all their problems and conflicts were unalike. Akhtar said the film was a partly fictionalised version of people around her, such as her friends and their families, and her observations from literature and news articles. Kagti and Akhtar revealed that some of their material came from observing people of Delhi during their friends' back-to-back, elite-class wedding parties as they were finishing the script; they made notes about people's behaviour and demeanor, and incorporated these into their script. After finalising the characters, they felt something was missing, so they added Pluto, the family dog, as an observer. The completed film has 25 characters and a dog.
  When asked about interweaving travel in the narrative, Akhtar said she and Kagti wanted a device to bring all the characters—the entire family—together. She said the film could have been set anywhere, such as a hill station, but they chose to set it on a cruise ship because the characters would not be able to leave. Akhtar called it a metaphor for the bigger journey that every family undertakes; the characters are stuck together on a ship in the middle of an ocean and could not leave if they wanted to. The film's title Dil Dhadakne Do was chosen because Akhtar wanted a catchy, easily identifiable title.
caption: Zoya Akhtar had always intended to make a family drama with a brother-sister relationship as its core narrative
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