Rajat Bharmecha of Udaan fame, Manjot Singh and Shazahn Padamsee won't like this one bit. However the star-pig who plays the fourth protagonist of their rom-com Disco Valley may be paid a bigger remuneration than the human actors.
And the pig has not come into the image without heartaches and tantrums. Apparently, the unique plan of importing a trained pig from Australia needed to be dropped as a result of cost factor.
Apparently the pig, if air-hopped from Australia to Fiji (where the film might be shot) would have cost the producer greater than the budget of all the film.
The film's producer Siddharth Jain met Fiji's Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama who offered to assist with the pig crisis.
Recalling his harrowing experience Jain said, "ONCE WE decided to make a pig as a pivotal character, we never realized it'd be so expensive. Greater than the price of hiring a pig, maintaining it on a daily basis was too expensive. So rather than hiring the pig we decided to shop for it outright and get a pig trainer."
Then began the following stretch of problems. "WE NEEDED a small cute pig. So we paid the cost of over-sized pig for a small one. Then we realized that the pig was temperamental. So we hired two identical pigs, in order that if one isn't in mood to offer his shot, the opposite can step in. Quite just like the two babies that Sajid Khan utilized in Heyy Babyy."
Jain is grateful to the Prime Minister of Fiji for offering assistance with the pig situation. "He offered that we use local Fiji pigs rather than bringing them from Australia."
Apparently all this constant attention to the pigs has not gone down well with the human actors in Disco Valley. We hear Bharmecha and Manjot have made their displeasure very clear to the producer.
Says Jain, "It cannot be helped. Having a pig as probably the most main characters isn't the same as a dog or an elephant in a movie. Nobody knows how pigs behave. There is not any pattern-history. So we're all moving cautiously."
Apparently, the pig is needed to accompany the primary human characters everywhere. It even has conversations with the solid. And has a fight sequence of its own on the end.
