Farah Khan said she had to ‘reverse engineer’ Main Hoon Na to make Shah Rukh Khan play a character who goes back to college.

Farah Khan shares how she rewrote Main Hoon Na keeping Shah Rukh Khan in mind.

Farah Khan shares how she rewrote Main Hoon Na keeping Shah Rukh Khan in mind. (Photo: Farah Khan/Instagram, IMDb)

Filmmaker Farah Khan watched Karan Johar’s Kuch Kuch Hota Hai featuring Shah Rukh Khan and was convinced she had to also make a young college film. The problem? She wanted to make it only with Shah Rukh, who felt he was “too old” to go back to college for the screen.

Farah Khan, who made her directorial debut with Main Hoon Na in 2004, said the film was her “long-time dream”. In an interview with Radio Nasha, Farah spilled the beans on how the film was originally a small movie about a college drug bust, headlined by Shah Rukh.

“After Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, I just wanted to make a young film. Shah Rukh ne mar mar ke Kuch Kuch Hota Hai kiya, he used to say I am too old to play this college boy and he was 30 that time! So I reverse engineered Main Hoon Na. I wanted to make a college film only with Shah Rukh. But why will Shah Rukh go to college, so the whole thing worked backwards. That if he has to go to college, he will go undercover.

“It started out as a small movie about Shah Rukh bursting a drug ring in the college, where his brother is also there and Shah Rukh he falls in love with the chemistry teacher. But while writing I kept feeling this is a bit small, and then the whole India-Pakistan, Project Milap, Raghavan (Suniel Shetty) bits kept adding and the film grew.”

The filmmaker revealed that Main Hoon Na was the “most expensive film of the year,” which couldn’t have been made without the backing of Shah Rukh Khan. “It was also a time of just love stories, and this was a masala movie after a long time. Those movies were like family picnics, but it was just not my genre,” she said.

Farah then recalled the time when she narrated the film to Shah Rukh, when they were filming  Mohabbatien and were driving from London to Oxford. “So he asked me to narrate the script in that three-hour drive. So, I did that–narrating from my handwritten script– and when we got down he said he will produce the film and he will star in it as well! But the shooting started after three years! But it’s ok, something’s are worth waiting for,” she added.

On the work front, Farah Khan is rumoured to have pitched a film to Shah Rukh on the lines of Main Hoon Na, but the superstar is yet to take a call on the project. The actor will be next seen in The King, co-starring his daughter Suhana Khan.