Shirish Kunder gave title `Happy New Year` to Farah Khan

Mumbai: Director Farah Khan, who is looking forward to the release of her next directorial venture `Happy New Year`, says the credit for giving the title of the film goes to her husband and director Shirish Kunder. Farah revealed that earlier, Shirish wanted to make with the same title on 1999 Kandahar hijacking incident.

"I have to give credit to Shirish for the title. He was planning to make a film titled `Happy New Year` which was about Kandahar hijacking. He thought of the title, as all the hostages were set free at the end," Farah said in an interview here. The `Om Shanti Om` director said her husband gave her the title, and was then registered it with Red Chillies. In sync with the occasion new year, Farah said they had planned to release the film on New Year`s eve, but since the film was completed, it is now releasing on festival Diwali. Farah says she had planned to make the musical heist film in 2005 instead of `Om Shanti Om`. "The idea (of making `Happy New Year`) came to me after the release of `Main Hoon Naa`. Shah Rukh was shooting in London when I met him to talk about `Happy New Year` and he agreed within no time to do it. I think once Shah Rukh said yes to the film then things fell in place," she said. The choreographer-turned-director said took quite some time due to its casting and climax and changes in script. "The basic idea was of a dance film but the script was different. In 2011, I started writing the final script. I thought this idea of heist in dance competition was unique but the writing was tough as two different genres and six-seven characters all are important. It took a while to write a script which we were happy about," Farah said. Farah feels lucky to get a huge star cast on board for the film. The film stars Deepika Padukone, Shah Rukh Khan, Abhishek Bachchan, Boman Irani, Sonu Sood, Vivaan Shah and Jackie Shroff in lead roles. "For many years people used to ask me why I am not making a dance film being a choreographer. I found it boring to make just a dance film, so I thought of making such film (dance) with a twist," she said. Produced by Red Chillies Entertainments Pvt Ltd and distributed by Yash Raj Films, `Happy New Year` will hit theatres on October 23.