Alwar locals dissrupt the shoot of Rock The Shaadi

November 7, 2011 - 2:02 PM IST

Navdeep Singh's Rock The Shaadi shoot recently faced some obstacles due to the rowdy and uncouth behavior of locals in Alwar. The film was to be shot in two different locations in Rajasthan, but the cast and crew were harassed by locals to such a great extent that they decided to cancel any further shooting there.

Rock The Shaadi was to be shot at Sariska Palace and in Alwar. The cast and crew were put up in Alwar at Clark Inn, located an hour away from the palace. Initially, the shooting took place smoothly but then suddenly the locals start misbehaving and demanding money from the crew. The cops also turned a deaf ear to the crew's complaints. The filmmakers then decided to shoot at another location but as the local authorities and people found out that the Alwar schedule shoot was cancelled, they began threatening the crew that they would confiscate their equipment, if they were not compensated for the loss.

The producers had to give in and ended up paying a couple of lakhs to the locals in Alwar as remuneration for the cancelled shoot.

Speaking about the incident, Siddharth Jain, CEO, I Rock Films said, "The people of Alwar were creating a lot of problems during the shooting, they were trying to harass us and blackmail us into extorting more money from us. Once you start shooting at a location, everybody knows that you have to complete the shoot and only then can you leave the location. Most of our supplies are from the local town itself and the people of Alwar took advantage of the situation and started harassing us. Even the hotel we were staying in started to harass us for more money."

Talking about the shoot for the second schedule of the film Sid said, "We were planning to shoot our second schedule also there but we have decided not to as we can shoot our film at any other location in any small town. That doesn't affect the continuity of the film because the second half of the film can be shot anywhere. It is unfortunate as we really wanted to shoot in Alwar. But we had a tough time with the locals there especially the hotels over there."

He is also planning to file a complaint with Producers Guild Of India (PGOI). "I am going to file a complaint with the PGOI and will never ever go there to shoot again. I want to warn all the other producers so that they should know about this incident and not go and shoot in Alwar because when you go there they will be really nice, sweet and co-operative but the moment you start shooting for the film, they change their colours."

Sid further added, "It is actually the loss of Alwar and the surrounding areas and not ours as when we go and shoot there we provide employment and business to the locals there. More than the locals, it's the powerful people over there that created these problems and it's really unfortunate that they lost out on this opportunity as we would have gone there and shot more and they would have earned more from us."

Rock The Shaadi is a zombie based comedy film directed by Navdeep Singh, starring Genelia D'souza and Abhay Deol in the lead roles. Kushal Punjabi plays a baddie while Preeti Desai has a cameo in the film.