At first, director-duo Raj Nidimoru & Krishna DK’s Happy Ending (2013) was set in Mumbai. It was conceptualised around a ‘hack writer’ (as Nidimoru puts it) wearing an AC/DC t-shirt and slippers, living around Carter Road (in Bandra), spending his time in the area’s coffee shops and DVD libraries. The script’s modest setting and intimate flavour was abandoned once Saif Ali Khan agreed to star in and co-produce the film, under his banner Illuminati Films. Having made their earlier films on a controlled budget, this was the duo’s first advent into a ‘studio film’. Mumbai became Los Angeles, the duo shot their first lip-sync song, and it was (thankfully) among the last attempts by Khan to play a youngish bachelor in a foreign country (which he had done in Love Aaj Kal (2009) and Cocktail (2012) – incidentally both produced by Illuminati films).