Amitabh Bachchan-Katrina Kaif film was shot at Dubai hotel that turned down James Bond, on Gaddafi’s private jet; flopped instantly, bankrupted Jackie Shroff | Bollywood News

Bollywood is a fleeting business, and most of the radical ideas that find their way to a screen don’t really end up making a mark on the overall picture of the industry. Boom (2003), directed Kaizad Gustad, is one such example, and nothing could save this film from its fate, not the money put into it, not the stellar cast, consing of names like Amitabh Bachchan, Jackie Shroff, Gulshan Grover, Madhu Sapre, Padma Lakshmi, or debutante Katrina Kaif. Jackie’s wife, Ayesha Shroff, produced the film, and in a recent interview she recalled all that they had achieved during the filming and why its ultimate failure hurt even more.
Ayesha and daughter Krishna Shroff sat down to have a chat about their business ventures and life on the YouTube channel of Zero1 Hustle. Ayesha admitted that she quit acting because she felt two actors couldn’t make a marriage work. She eventually turned a producer, “I always had that passion for movies, and my husband was also producing films. Suddenly he got very busy, and he told me, ‘Len, I don’t have time for this; can you look into it?’ I decided to get into it, and I loved it immediately. Then I did another film, Jis Desh Mai Ganga Rehta Hai, with Govinda. Everyone told me that it would take me 50 years to complete the film because he was supposedly this moody star. I used to go to his house every day, pick him up and bring him to the set. Except for the songs, we finished the shooting in 30 days.”
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She talked about her and Jackie’s investment into Sony and how exiting that deal had made them quite a comfortable amount of money. “After we exited from partnering with Sony, we made Boom. It was a fantastic experience, and it was very much ahead of its time. Actually, I was making money before the film was released. We had such an incredible cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Gulshan Grover, and Jackie, and we got a 17-year-old Katrina Kaif from London. Salman Rushdie used to hang out at our sets because he was seeing Padma Lakshmi at the time. We had Bo Derek, and I even got her to do the iconic scene from her film Ten, but instead of a swimsuit, she was wearing a golden saree,” shared Ayesha.
Talking about the film, she added, “We shot in the Burj Al-Arab, and at the same time, the James Bond people had contacted the hotel for the same location, because they wanted to make it into the villain’s lair, but they said no. I pleaded with them, and that was Mr Bachchan’s house in the film. We had Gaddafi’s private jet, and we even shut down Dubai airport for half a day.”
Despite all the efforts, money and cameo appearances, the film tanked at the box office, and Ayesha credits that to the film getting leaked before release. She said, “Boom changed the look of Bollywood, but the film got pirated before release. DVDs were selling in front of every train station, and all the dributors backed out; I had no money to pay anyone. At that point in time, Jackie told me that we were going to release the film no matter what, and we signed bonds for everyone. We did go through some sh*tty times. But as a unit and as a family, we all kept each other happy and content. Whatever negative happened, or when the ‘doomsday’ came, we made an adventure out of it. My husband has a favourite quote, which is, ‘I am a blank cheque,’ and he kept on working, and we never let the kids know that we were going through any financial trauma. Even when things were really bad, all of us were part of an adventure, and we got through it.”