Lights Camera Scoop: How Manoj Bajpayee's Life-Sized 'Jugnuma' Wings Were Designed; Inside Diljit Dosanjh's 'No Entry 2' Exit

Making of the Wings

The most talked-about scene this week—and by extension, the film—has been from Manoj Bajpayee's exquisitely mounted Jugnuma. In the opening sequence of the magnetic new film by Raam Reddy, Bajpayee punctures the mundane morning routine when he casually walks to the edge of a cliff, and jumps—flapping his wings, flying away against the stunning backdrop of the Himalayas.

THR India has exclusively learnt that the team of the film spent four months making the stunning life-sized wings, which was approximately 15ft in length across the sides.

Production designer Juhi Agarwal, also Reddy's wife, knew that the wings were the "foundational stone of the magic realism world" and were designed carefully to be something a man living in the mountains in the 1980s—with a dream to fly—could make if he was deeply passionate about it.

Agarwal and the team used the pumping mechanism from a car door and worked on articulating joints and hinges to make it work. They wanted Bajpayee to be able to actually open and close the wings for his take-offs and landings.

BTS of 'Jugnuma'

BTS of 'Jugnuma'

BTS of 'Jugnuma'

"The idea was to make it look like human-sized bird wings that resembled the hawks that are found in the mountains. We wanted it to feel that if you were to see him flying from very far away, you could almost mistake him for a bird. So I hand-dyed many artificial feathers in several sizes, layering them to make it look like real bird wings. We also incorporated some steampunk elements in the visible design of the wings," Agarwal reveals.

All of this took four months of intensive designing to reach the final wing, made in collaboration with a paraglider and artist Rakesh Morchale. The team made three-four full-sized versions before settling on the perfect balance. Once they had the final design, they had to make several sets of different sizes, one for each member of the family and multiple for Bajpayee’s character Dev.

Exit-Entry

It has been 20 years since the release of No Entry, and the Boney Kapoor-backed comedy has been in the news for a sequel for what feels like ten years now. Every few years, No Entry 2 makes its way to the news cycle, but this time, just when it seemed like everything was finally aligning ahead of it going on floors in October with a new cast led by Varun Dhawan, Arjun Kapoor and Diljit Dosanjh, it became public that the Punjabi singer quit the film.

Some insiders claimed that Dosanjh's fee wasn't going well with the cost of the film, and the team had to part ways, while others maintained that it was the actor-singer's packed schedule that didn't fall in place. Producer Kapoor went on record and stated that not going ahead with the film was a mutual decision due to Dosanjh's date issue.

Now, the makers are trying to find a replacement for the film, which might happen within the week, and the film will now roll next year, depending on the schedule of the entire cast.