Development Director
Kunal Kohli was fascinated with the idea of soulmates and conceived the film as a tale of "the strength of love beyond generations". The premise would be a love story with the same two actors in three different time period that did not involve
reincarnation. He said, "It's the story of three different lives and proves that love is a promise forever. We have chosen one hundred years to talk about love. We didn't want it to be soppy or melodramatic." Kohli co-wrote the screenplay with
Robin Bhatt. He found it difficult to represent three time periods, but felt that the film could appeal to everyone if he chose to "keep some of it in the past and still make it youthful and modern." He said, "I have created humour and situations which would be liked by everyone". However, rather than remaking films of the past, he "remade a whole era. It is much easy to remake a film, remaking an entire era is not a cakewalk; it is a very challenging task." Through the final storyline of the film, set in 2012, Kohli wanted to demonstrate a modern romance, which mostly happens through
SMS,
instant messaging apps, and
Internet chat. Kohli described it by saying, "Today people flirt, communicate and connect through smses and you get that feeling of being with somebody even when you are not with that person because that person is telling you everything that is happening in their life. You are constantly updating the other person with your thoughts and that is what keeps you connected to that person."
Amitabh Shukla was chosen to edit the film while
Sandeep Shirodkar was brought in to compose the background score.
Casting In November 2010, Kohli announced that
Shahid Kapoor would be starring in his untitled upcoming film and stated that he was looking to sign the leading actress in the next few days. In January 2011, Kohli confirmed
Priyanka Chopra's casting on
Twitter. This became the second film collaboration between the two actors after
Kaminey (2009). Kohli had approached Kapoor for a different film while the script of
Teri Meri Kahaani was still in development. When Kapoor asked about working together on a different film, Kohli proposed the as yet unwritten love story. At that time, Khan and Chopra had been asked to star together in a number of films, including
2 States,
Cocktail,
Race 2 Siddharth Anand's adaptation of
2 States would film at the same time as Kohli's proposed film. Anand and Kohli met and agreed that Chopra would act in
2 States.
Prachi Desai and
Neha Sharma were cast to play Kapoor's love interests in the 1960s and 2012, respectively. Kapoor said that of the three characters he plays—Javed the poet, Govind the struggling musician and Krish the college student—Krish is the closest to himself, but Javed was the most interesting, a type of character he had never played before. Javed uses
shayari, a type of poetry, to flirt. "Shayaris are his pickup lines and very often he does succeed to getting the girls," said Kapoor. "He is not a sophisticated shayar and that is part of his charm." Of the three, Chopra found playing a girl from 1910 to be the toughest. She said, "There was no reference point for it except some books," and the few sketches Kohli was able to provide for costume design. Even with only written sources, she worked toward developing an accent that would have been typical for a Punjabi girl from Pakistan. and she related best to her contemporary character Radha. But for her Ruksar was the most interesting. "I got to play a superstar actress of the 1960s," she said. "I got to wear the glamorous clothes of those days, don big hair-dos and speak the way actresses spoke then. I loved all those things." He did extensive research for six months, visiting each location in person to ensure that the sets looked authentic and real, and using
visual effects (VFX) to complete the designs. Sappel said that the set for 1960s Mumbai was much more time-consuming, with "trams, chawl, guest houses, old studios and old cinema houses" to create the intended atmosphere. The first stage of shooting was completed in early July 2011. Filming resumed at the end of the month, and continued until mid-August 2011. Initially, the
London scenes were to be shot in September after the release of
Mausam (2011), another film starring Kapoor. However, the release date was postponed one week to 16 September, causing the pre-release promotions to conflict with the existing shooting schedule. Chopra was scheduled to film
Barfi! (2012) in July, but director
Anurag Basu agreed to move filming to September so that Kohli could film with both Chopra and Kapoor in July. Filming ended in January 2012 with a four-day long song shoot in
Aurangabad, Maharashtra. ==Soundtrack==