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Dhoom was the first action franchise by any Indian production house and that changed a lot of things in Bollywood. Importantly, from the first movie itself, YRF managed to deliver top-of-the-class action as well as casting with all three Bollywood films. While Abhishek Bachchan and Uday Chopra remained constant as the lead heroes, the rest of the cast including the female leads and importantly the antagonists kept on changing.
Today as Dhoom completes 20 years here are some of the interesting facts about the franchise that inspired YRF to come up with more movies like Ek Tha Tiger, War, and Pathaan.
First-of-its-kind bike heist
While robberies and smuggling have been commonly shown in Indian movies for decades, Dhoom was the first movie to show a bike heist. In Dhoom, John Abraham has a team of bikers who successfully manage robberies using high-performance bikes which was quite new in those times for an Indian movie.
Real actions with no VFX
That was the time when no VFX existed in Bollywood. So the stunts and bikers jumping and moving from coaches and to their superbikes were all performed in real. However, YRF wanted to ensure that no one was harmed during the shoot and hence they hired Allan Amin who was the action coordinator for the first two movies from the Dhoom franchise.
He once revealed, “Both Abhishek and John were eager to take on the stunts. But the train jump required expert stuntmen. I had to precisely time the train and the bikers. I found two Australian stunt experts online willing to do the jump. We shot it all for real—no VFX was used.”
Special equipment was created for chasing sequences
Bikes and high-speed racing made Dhoom different from other Bollywood movies in that era. But it came with a lot of challenges. Since Amin was a biking expert he was asked to design the stunts and to make sure that during the close-ups the shots looked real he designed special equipment. It ensured that the stunts were preformed safely.
Discussing his plans, Amin during one of his interviews said, “Initially, the plan was to use cars for the stunts, but Aditya Chopra, the film’s producer, felt that cars would make it hard to see the actors’ faces. So, bikes were chosen instead. The film featured Suzuki Hayabusa (1300cc), Suzuki GSX-R600 (600cc), and Suzuki Bandit (1200cc). Aditya Chopra , Sanjay Gadhavi, and I decided on the bikes together.”
