Shahrukh wasn’t expecting Chak De to be what it became. After watching the first screening of Chak De, he believed it was the worst film made by the team.
We had some of the brightest minds making the film like Aditya Chopra, Jaideep Sahni, Shimit Amin. We had young girls who learned how to play hockey. We had Yash Chopra backing it. But when I saw the film at its first screening, we all looked at it and felt it was the worst film we had ever made in our lives.
The girls didn’t know this because for them seeing themselves on screen for the first time was a big thing. So they were screaming and dancing while we were sitting there and crying. We had reached that stage of failure where you start telling people, ‘listen we did what we wanted to’… It was really really sad.
Another fact – Salman Khan (the first choice for the coach) refused the film because he had some problems with the climax. After Aditya Chopra narrated the story, Salman said ‘how can this work dude, it can’t work’. Thankfully, he refused Chak De.
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