Karan Johar has to be Bollywood’s most resilient filmmaker. Just yesterday, he cheerfully shared a beautiful Instagram post for his mother Hiroo Johar’s birthday which this year had to be quietly celebrated at home. This at a time when two of KJo’s biggest films have been badly hit by the global Coronavirus threat that has now come to India. Other filmmakers might have sat at home and sulked bitterly. But Karan is biding his time with the belief that this too shall pass.

His Dharma Productions, in co-production with Rohit Shetty Picturez, Cape of Good Films and Reliance Entertainment, was to release 2020’s big ticket film Sooryavanshi next Wednesday for Gudi Padva. That has now been indefinitely postponed. And KJo’s Takht, the multi-star period drama set in the Mughal era, that he is to personally direct, now has a change in its location shoot that might affect the release date of the film and its big budget. Both of these hard knocks KJo has bravely taken on the chin.

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PeepingMoon.com has exclusively learned that almost 60 per cent of Takht was to be shot in Italy. KJo had planned an entire 45-days schedule in the Tuscany city of Florence. The location, a source said, was so perfect in every way that just one set for Takht here was equal to 20 sets elsewhere. KJo was excited with the location and had locked it. The film, which will be a 70 mm magnum opus from Dharma Productions, was to shortly go on the floor and aim for a Christmas release in December 2021.

But the Florence shoot is now totally out of question with Italy being the worst hit country in the world by Coronavirus. Parts of Takht were also scheduled to be shot in Spain and that also has been called off. Poor KJo, he is left to scouting for 20 new and suitable locations in India now for his film. Buzz is that he is zeroing in on Jaipur and Jaisalmer. Takht stars Ranveer Singh, Kareena Kapoor Khan, Vicky Kaushal, Alia Bhatt, Janhvi Kapoor, Bhumi Pednekar and Anil Kapoor. The drama about succession to the Mughal empire has Vicky playing Emperor Aurangzeb and Ranveer his elder brother Dara. Anil plays their father Emperor Shah Jahan.