'Kal Ho Naa Ho' is a romantic drama film starring Shah Rukh Khan, Saif Ali Khan and Preity Zinta that has become iconic and garnered cult status over the years. Recently, the film's director Nikkhil Advani opened up about working on the film and shared his experience of working with Shah Rukh Khan. Advani shared that after shooting for four days, SRK wanted to quit working on the film because of an injury and suggested Salman Khan for his role.
In an interview with Mirchi, Nikhil recalled, "He didn’t want to do the film. After shooting for four days, he told me and Karan that he couldn’t continue. He had a back injury. He’d done a stunt for Duplicate, and hadn’t looked after it since then. It had become very bad. He called up Karan and he said, ‘I can’t go on.’ After doing one scene, he said, ‘I can’t do it, I’ll call Salman up, you make it with him’.”
Nikhil recalled Shah Rukh Khan telling him that his injury was serious. "I ’m going for surgery to Germany, and it’ll take me six months to recover. You won’t wait, of course’. We said we’ll wait.” Nikkhil added that they initially started shooting in Toronto, but he felt disappointed because he had hoped to shoot in New York, as originally outlined in the script by Karan. When he expressed his frustration to Yash Johar, they decided to move the shoot to New York a few months later.
About Kal Ho Naa Ho
'Kal Ho Naa Ho' was recently released in theatres and the film received a good response in terms of audience turnout. Nikkhil Advani also jokingly pointed out that someone had pointed out that the re-released 'Kal Ho Naa Ho' had done better than his latest film, 'Vedaa'. Asked why Nikkhil does not collaborate with Shah Rukh Khan, he said, "I have a 100% hit record with Shah Rukh Khan, I don’t want to ruin it! I’m terrified of making something that doesn’t live up to expectations.”