`Pakeezah` incident inspired Himesh Reshammiya`s `The Xpose`

Mumbai: Makers of musician-actor Himesh Reshammiya-starrer `The Xpose` which is set to be released on May 16, said here today that the movie has "exposed" various Bollywood "secrets" from the 1960s and 1970s.

One scene in `The Xpose` is related to the 1972 movie called `Pakeezah` which starred the late actress Meena Kumari but flopped at the box office initially. However, the movie went on to become a superhit later after the demise of its leading lady Meena Kumari, two weeks after its release. Makers of `The Xpose` claimed that `Pakeezah` which flopped initially became a hit after its director Kamal Amrohi got actress Padma Khanna to dub Meena Kumari`s voice and released a tape as the late actress` "last recorded message" to drive fans` sympathy, which eventually worked as expected. "We have some really interesting intriguing real life stories from Bollywood. It was an interesting incident that happened after Meena Kumari`s death. Director Kamal Amrohi made Padma Khanna dub in Meena Kumari`s voice and released it later to fans, which helped his film," director of `The Xpose` Anant Mahadevan said. "We have a similar scene, where producers release an actress` last recording, which was actually recorded by the dubbing artiste," the National award-winning director said. Anant Mahadevan claimed that he has tried to weave in many such interesting and unknown facts of various actors` lives to make the movie`s plot interesting. "The film`s story is from the 1960s when the media wasn`t so aggressive and only two magazines used to have all this inside information regarding the industry. We have done our research and tried to put together all intriguing facts together within a story," Anant said.