Maidaan: Production Designer Reveals Set Was Rebuilt 4 Times; Producer Boney Kapoor Had 'Full Faith'

In a recent conversation, production designer Khyatee Kanchan revealed major details and setbacks faced during the shoot of Ajay Devgn's 2024 release Maidaan. She also expressed immense respect for producer

Boney Kapoor for 'keeping on going and never thinking of shelving the project,' even after the sets were destroyed by a cyclone and had to be rebuilt four times.

Production designer Khyatee Kanchan remembers hardships during Maidaan shoot

In an interview with Bollywood Hungama, Khyatee shared, "It was extremely painful to see our labour of love destroyed during the cyclone. But before that, due to COVID, we had built the same stadium set in Madh Island twice. That set was built 4 times, in all. It was an Olympic-sized stadium with 12 plus camera towers and a patch of grass land to curate the grass for the stadium."ALSO READ: Paresh Rawal Declines Ajay Devgn's Drishyam 3 Despite 'Very Good Script': Maza Nahin Aaya Praising Bollywood filmmaker Boney Kapoor, she mentioned, "It was extremely tough during COVID. Since we had started filming a lot of talkie parts at the beginning of the project, unaware that a pandemic was going to hit us. After the first lockdown, we had to film the football matches, which meant that we needed players and crowds. In this situation, hats off to Boney ji that he kept going and never ever thinking of shelving the project."She concluded with, "He had full faith in Amit and the whole team. The fact that we had put so much of our lives into this film, nothing was going to stop us and eventually, after all the hardships, we did manage to have a film which is made with heart."

More about the film

For the unversed, Maidaan is a 2024 Indian Hindi-language biographical sports drama film co-written and directed by Amit Ravindernath Sharma and produced by Akash Chawla, Arunava Joy Sengupta, Boney Kapoor and Zee Studios. The film stars Ajay Devgn as Syed Abdul Rahim, a celebrated football coach in India between 1952 and 1962.