What led Chandigarh-based author Khushwant Singh to turn his book ‘Maharaja in Denims' into ‘India's first AI feature film'

Indian Express

17-05-2025

When author and former state information commissioner of Punjab, Khushwant Singh, wrote Maharaja in Denims, it immediately caught Bollywood's attention.
Iconic villain Ranjeet was the first to bid for its rights around 2016, presumably to launch his son.
Soon after, producer Guneet Monga showed interest.
And why not? Maharaja in Denims has all the makings of a larger-than-life feature film — a work of fiction that follows the journey of a young boy who believes he is the reincarnation of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, founder of the Sikh Empire.
Through regression therapy, he finds himself transported into key moments in history, including the Partition of 1947, the anti-Sikh riots of 1984, and eventually the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks.
But when no deal materialised and the book was no longer tied up in any rights agreements, Singh's cousin — tech guru Gurdeep Singh Pall — offered an alternative.
Pall, known for his long tenure at Microsoft, most recently as corporate vice-president overseeing business AI projects, suggested they stop pitching the book and instead spend two years turning it into India's first full-length AI-generated feature film.
'It's a period drama. The biggest hurdle was the budget — it would have required hundreds of crores. And post-pandemic, it has become increasingly difficult to draw enough people to theatres to justify such an expense,' Singh, who is based in Chandigarh, told The Indian Express during his visit to Mumbai for the debut edition of the World Audio Visual Entertainment (WAVES) Summit.
'Gurdeep suggested we make it as an AI film, which meant we no longer needed to spend crores on elaborate sets or casting an A-lister as the lead.'
In 2023, Pall and Singh co-founded Intelliflicks and set up a team in Chandigarh.
'There are seven of us, including Balpreet Kaur, who translated the novel into a script and is also leading the screenplay and direction. The rest are experts in software engineering and AI,' said Singh.
Using tools such as Runway, Midjourney, and Clink, the team generated the visuals and video content through a combination of prompts and software. Singh played us nearly 10 minutes of footage — the environments and characters, barring a few inconsistencies, looked surprisingly lifelike.
He says the film is close to completion.
'We have already stitched together about 30 minutes of footage. We are targeting a total runtime of around 100 minutes,' he said.
Initial challenges, he noted, were lip-syncing and continuity.
'We had dubbing artists lend their voices, but cutting-edge lip-sync technology was not publicly available until after the US elections — likely due to concerns over deepfake manipulation. Continuity was also tricky because the same prompt can yield different results each time. But we have figured out ways to manage that, and when the film releases, you will see how the visuals are hyper-realistic.'
Now, the team is focusing on marketing — an area outside their expertise.
Another challenge, Singh admitted, is knowing when to stop.
'Technology evolves so fast that every week brings new improvements. At some point, we have to accept that the film is done.'
They are aiming for a release by August or September this year.
Is Singh worried, given that he has invested his own money? He quoted his cousin Pall: 'Even if it's not the most entertaining or gripping film, it will still be a breakthrough — India's first AI feature.'
He added, 'Someday, if the Cannes Film Festival introduces a category for AI films, we want India to have a nomination in it.'