Laal Singh Chaddha Video Introduces Indian Forrest Gump’s Version of Bubba

Bubba from Alabama is Bala from Bodipalem in Laal Singh Chaddha, the Indian remake of Forrest Gump, starring Aamir Khan in the role that won Tom Hanks an Oscar. A new video shared by Viacom18 Studios introduced actor Naga Chaitanya as Balaraju and offered several behind-the-scenes glimpses at the film, which will finally arrive in theaters next month after a majestic production that lasted the entire pandemic.

The four-minute video immediately teases how different (yet familiar) Laal Singh Chaddha could be. While Bala’s introductory scene appears to be broadly similar to how Mykelti Williamson’s Bubba was introduced in Forrest Gump, the scene is — in typical Bollywood fashion — noticeably brighter to look at, and drenched in local flavor. Bala, for instance, is from a small town in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. Chaitanya explains in the video how second names in many south Indian cultures are derived from hometowns, which is why Bala’s full name is Balaraju Bodi.

The name also has a personal connection to Chaitanya, who belongs to a famous line of film stars in his home state. His grandfather, Akkineni Nageswara Rao, starred in a film titled Balaraju in 1948. In fact, this inspired the filmmakers to base Bala’s appearance in Laal Singh Chaddha on Chaitanya’s grandfather — although, like Bubba in Forrest Gump, Bala also has a protruding jaw.

Khan, one of India’s biggest and most respected stars, spoke fondly of Chaitanya and thanked him for agreeing to do the film. In his own words:

“I am really grateful to Chay for doing this film. As a producer, it gave me a sense of comfort to work with him. He is a team player. As an actor, he is so on the ball. He does it with full focus and completely immerses himself in the film. He is so focused and engrossed in his shots.”

For context, because India has several thriving film industries that work largely independently of each other, it’s rather unusual for actors to cross over. Which is why it’s notable for Chaitanya, who is a star in the Telugu language film industry — that’s where RRR came from, by the way — to work in Laal Singh Chaddha, which is a Hindi language (or Bollywood) film. For Chaitanya to speak in Hindi for the film isn’t unlike a Spanish person speaking in Italian.

The video also includes several behind-the-scenes shots of the war sequences, which will presumably be set during the 1999 Kargil War between India and Pakistan (Chaitanya talks about shooting in Kargil). In Forrest Gump, Forrest and Bubba fought in Vietnam. The original film was directed by Robert Zemeckis and won six Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Khan is among the country’s biggest box office draws. Laal Singh Chaddha is his first film since 2018’s swashbuckler adventure Thugs of Hindostan, which bombed critically and commercially. He is perhaps best known to Western audiences for having starred in the Oscar-nominated period epic Lagaan.

Directed by Advait Chandan and written by Atul Kulkarni (with the original film’s Eric Roth also credited), Laal Singh Chaddha also stars Kareena Kapoor Khan and Mona Singh. The film will be released in theaters on August 11, in time for the Indian Independence Day holiday on August 15.

 

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