What's Your Raashee?

What's Your Raashee?
Theatrical release poster depicts a baffled man, surrounded by a frame which consists of a pictures of twelve different women, looking forward. Text at the bottom of the poster reveals the title, tagline, production credits and release date.
Theatrical release poster
Directed byAshutosh Gowariker
Written byScreenplay:
Naushil Mehta
Ashutosh Gowariker
Dialogues:
Naushil Mehta
Amit Mistry
Tapan A. Bhatt
Based onKimball Ravenswood
by Madhu Rye
Produced by
Starring
CinematographyPiyush Shah
Edited byBallu Saluja
Music bySohail Sen
Production
companies
Distributed byUTV Motion Pictures
Release date
  • 25 September 2009 (2009-09-25)
Running time
211 minutes[1]
CountryIndia
LanguageHindi
Budget32 crore[2]
Box office17crore[2]

What's Your Raashee? (lit.'What's Your Zodiac Sign?') is a 2009 Indian Hindi-language romantic comedy film written and directed by Ashutosh Gowariker and produced by Ronnie Screwvala and Sunita A. Gowariker. Based on the Gujarati novel Kimball Ravenswood by the playwright and novelist Madhu Rye,[3] the film stars Harman Baweja and Priyanka Chopra, with Darshan Jariwala and Dilip Joshi in supporting roles, and follows the story of Yogesh Patel (Baweja), a Gujarati NRI, who must marry in ten days to save his brother from harm; Yogesh agrees to meet twelve potential brides (all played by Chopra), one from each zodiac sign.

Gowariker had always aspired to make a romantic comedy and was inspired to adapt Rye's novel into a feature film after watching a play based on the same source material. Later, he bought the rights and co-wrote the screenplay with playwright Naushil Mehta. In the process, several plot changes were made for the cinematic adaptation, notably the similarity between the twelve girls, and the ending. Since Gowariker was against using prosthetics to create the twelve characters, Chopra worked on her body language and her voice to make them distinct. Principal photography was extensively done at sixty-seven locations across Mumbai, and partly in Baroda and Chicago. The soundtrack, consisting of thirteen songs, each representing an astrological sign and one compilation, was composed by newcomer Sohail Sen replacing Gowariker's frequent collaborator A. R. Rahman, with lyrics by Javed Akhtar.[citation needed]

The film's master copy was stolen from Adlabs before its release, and a few days later was recovered by the police, who found and seized several pirated copies of the film created from the master copy. The film had its world premiere at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival and was released on 25 September 2009. With a box office gross 17 crore, it was unsuccessful and received mixed reviews, with criticism for its over three-and-a-half-hour run time and its screenplay. However, the film garnered acclaim for its soundtrack and Chopra's performance, which received a nomination for the Screen Award for Best Actress. She also became the first actress in history to portray twelve roles in one film, a feat considered for inclusion in the Guinness World Records.[citation needed]

  1. ^ "What's Your Raashee?". British Board of Film Classification. Archived from the original on 22 January 2017. Retrieved 22 January 2017.
  2. ^ a b "What's Your Raashee? – Movie". Box Office India.
  3. ^ "A new Zodiac sign?". The Hindu. October 2009.