Rajni’s Robot was once Will Smith’s

What’s common between Rajnikanth’s soon-to-release sci-fi extravaganza and Will Smith’s 2004 movie besides the title, Robot? Director Shankar spent R 6 crore to rent the model last seen in Will Smith's film I Robot.

What’s common between Rajnikanth’s soon-to-release sci-fi extravaganza and Will Smith’s 2004 movie besides the title,

HT Image

Robot

? Turns out, the android used in the Shankar- tri-lingual is the one seen in

I Robot

over six years ago.

A source associated with our Rs 150 crore opus reveals that it took Shankar nearly three years to get a fix on the robot for his Rajnikanth-Aishwarya Rai Bachchan starrer. Since the animatronics and visual effects were being created at Los Angeles’ Stan Winston Studio in Los Angeles, the team wanted a top-of-the-line model.

And once he saw this robot, he wanted it immediately, never mind that it cost Rs 6 crore to rent it out. An extra Rs 4 crore went towards acquiring two dummies. Fortunately, producer Kalanithi Maran didn’t crib about the additional Rs 10 crore expenditure.

“We wanted only the best robot for our film,” says Shankar. “And this advanced model we stumbled upon at Stan Winston Studio was perfect. We were stunned to see the things it could accomplish.”

Interestingly, Shankar wasn’t aware that his android had been used in

I Robot

. He learnt about the ‘connect’ only a couple of days after he began filming. “When I heard that it had been featured in Will Smith’s movie, it proved that we’d made the right choice,” he says. “I hope the audience will endorse our opinion.”

On October 2,

Robot

in Hindi and

Enthiran

in Tamil and Telugu will open in theatres.