Anurag Basu: During Jagga Jasoos shoot, we'd play Ludo

Ranbir Kapoor and Katrina Kaif in Jagga Jasoos

When Anurag Basu began shooting for his then-untitled film in 2019, rumours were rife that the ensemble drama - featuring Abhishek Bachchan, Rajkummar Rao, Pankaj Tripathi, Aditya Roy Kapur, Fatima Sana Shaikh and Sanya Malhotra, among others - was a sequel to his 2007 offering, Life In a Metro. The movie was unofficially referred to as Metro 2 till the filmmaker christened it Ludo last December. The film immediately caught cinephiles' attention, courtesy its quirky title. However, few people know that the name has its roots in Basu's last directorial venture, Jagga Jasoos (2017).

Anurag Basu on the film's set

The filmmaker says that zeroing in on a title for the Netflix film - revolving around four different journeys that intersect in the end - was far from easy. When brainstorming for the name, he found his mind racing back to the shoot of the Ranbir Kapoor and Katrina Kaif starrer. "I remembered that throughout the shoot of Jagga Jasoos, we all used to play Ludo on the set. We would continue to play the board game even while travelling [from one location to another]. It was fascinating how the game was endless. [Since] this is a story of four different journeys coming together, the name Ludo fell in place."

Abhishek Bachchan with Inayat Verma

The 2017 musical mystery adventure had taken over four years to complete. Before the film reached the finish line, Kapoor and Kaif, who were in a long-term relationship, parted ways.

After Jagga Jasoos, Basu reveals that he had four to five scripts on his table as he struggled to decide his next. "Tani [wife] and Pritam da [composer friend] pushed me towards this script. Ludo shows you that you don't meet people by accident, they are meant to cross your path for a reason," states the director.

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