In Pics: Shah Rukh Khan-Deepika Padukone's Chennai Express clocks 5 years - 5 lesser known facts about the film

Deepika Padukone, as amazing as she is, wasn’t Rohit Shetty’s first choice to play Meenalochi. In fact, his first pick was Kareena Kapoor, who he worked with in the Golmaal franchise. However, since Kareena was busy with Talaash, he went with Deepika. Asin was also reportedly in the mix.

The film was released on International Women’s Day, August 8. To celebrate the day, Shah Rukh announced that each upcoming movie of his would feature the lead actress’s name first in the credits, and then his. So, for Chennai Express, Deepika’s name came first and then came Shah Rukh’s.

The film was originally supposed to be shot in Ooty. However, since Shah Rukh felt that Ooty was too far from Mumbai, a number of locations from the hill-station were reconstructed in Wai, situated on the outskirts of Panchgani. It took over 40 days and Rs 1.5 crore to construct the sets.

The Pakistani distributors and exhibitors abandoned Chennai Express, saying that there four other Pakistani films that deserve more attention and screen time on the Eid day of release. The film was eventually released a day later, and still managed to make Rs 1.8 crore in its first weekend. If the release were postponed by, say, a week, the film could’ve lost crores, considering the depletion in value due to piracy.

Believe it or not, Rohit Shetty did not originally plan to call the film Chennai Express. In fact, to lend a more southern sound to the film, he wanted to call it Ready Steady Po. However, to emphasise more of the southern connection and also highlight the importance of the train scene for Shah Rukh and Deepika’s characters, he settled for Chennai Express, while the original title was made the tagline.