Tumbbad turns 8 this week, and with Tumbbad 2 announced, fans are revisiting the cult folklore horror. Behind Hastar, the relentless rain and the cursed womb lies a making story almost as unlikely as the legend itself.
Nawazuddin Siddiqui was the first lead
Tumbbad first went into production in 2008 with Nawazuddin Siddiqui in the lead role, but it was quickly shelved when the producer backed out. The film was then shot in 2012 after Sohum Shah and Anand Gandhi came on board.
A friend’s story left a scar
The seed was planted by a story Barve’s friend told in the Nagzira wildlife sanctuary in 1993, one Barve said “made him crap his pants.” The story was “Aaji” by Marathi writer Narayan Dharap, who had based it on Stephen King’s short story Gramma. Barve later found the original story “utterly bland, mundane and forgettable,” but his friend’s narration stayed with him.
A 700-page storyboard anchored it all
Barve wrote the first draft in 1997, when he was 18 years old. From 2009 to 2010, he created a 700-page storyboard within eight months, which he called the “anchor on which everything was based.”
Sohum Shah kept one look for six years
Sohum Shah was cast as Vinayak Rao, for which he gained eight kilograms. Since the production took six years, he maintained his character’s look for the entire period. Shah said he was surprised because he “hadn’t seen anything like this in Indian cinema,” and found it similar to Vikram Baital and Panchatantra.
Three false starts and seven exits
Barve said the story’s main theme was greed. The film went on the floor three times and was optioned by seven production companies who backed out; he felt this was because he had “no frame of reference for them, nothing like Tumbbad had even been tried before.”
The first cut did not work
After the editing, Barve and Shah realised the film was “not able to achieve what it set out to do.” It was then re-written and re-shot, and filming was completed in May 2015. The final film has minimal dialogue and was shot with constant physical movement with few cuts.
Rain had to be built too
Barve said the “lonely rainy atmosphere that defies the feeling of time’s passage is as central as its characters.” The crew shot in natural light and without sunlight on Red Camera. Due to a shortage of rainfall that year, they used artificial rain and had to wait for hours for cloud cover.
Venice made history for Indian cinema
Tumbbad premiered in the critics’ week section of the 75th Venice International Film Festival, becoming the first Indian film to be screened there. It was released in India on 12 October 2018 on 575 screens.
That is the making of a monster. Which of these did you not know? Tell us the Tumbbad detail you are still thinking about.
Facts from Wikipedia: Tumbbad, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Film images from TMDB. This product uses the TMDB API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDB.
