Released in 2010, Kites is a trilingual (English, Hindi, and Spanish) action-romance film directed by Anurag Basu. Primarily set in Las Vegas, the movie is about an Indian-American Bollywood dance teacher and a Mexican woman who fall in love with each other despite language and cultural differences.
“The idea for Kites came to me when I was gazing at the sky and saw two kites flying,” producer Rakesh Roshan explains. “It looked very romantic. It was very intriguing – the way they came close, played, almost embraced each other and then drew apart. Unaware that someone else was pulling the strings and could cut them loose. I sat down and penned a story around this idea.” (Source)
Learn more about Roshan and Basu’s inspiration for the film’s title here.
Watch the official trailer below:
“Kites – The Movie (The official Big Pictures Movie Trailer 1)” by RelianceBigpictures
Filming Locations
Kites was filmed on location in Las Vegas, Santa Fe and Los Angeles.
The film’s line producer Prashant Shah revealed that originally, their location choices included Atlantic City, Hong Kong casinos or Las Vegas. Las Vegas was selected because of its “grandness” (source). Nearly all of the first half of the film was shot in Las Vegas (source).
Fun Facts
A second version of the film titled Kites: The Remix was created by Hollywood director, Brett Ratner. The second version of the film is a lot shorter, running 90 minutes as opposed to the original 130 minutes. The background score was also redone and a few scenes were altered. However, Ratner did his best to stay as true to the original story as possible while also attempting to appeal to a much younger, more action-oriented audience.
The original Kites opened worldwide on over 2300 screens, including more than 200 screens in the U.S., which made it the largest Bollywood release in North America up to that time. Kites also became the first Bollywood movie to reach the Weekend Top Ten.
Bonus Video
Watch this alternate trailer below that features many scenes from Las Vegas:
