Dubrovnik has certainly found its place on the radar of international film production companies. Largely thanks to the globally popular HBO series Game of Thrones, Dubrovnik is reaping the rewards of worldwide exposure. The knock-on effect of these blockbusters is a constant stream of fans flooding to the city to see the locations up close and personal. With the eighth episode of the Star Wars franchise planned to be filmed in the city in March the influx of “film tourists” will certainly be even greater in coming years.
However one film could do more than Game of Thrones and Star Wars combined, and it has gone almost unnoticed in this continent. The most well-known Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan recorded part of his latest film “Fan” in Dubrovnik and it is due to hit the screens on the 15th of April this year. Back in May 2015 Shah Rukh Khan filmed some action scenes in the centre of the Old City of Dubrovnik, as well as other parts of Croatia, and even though these scenes form a short section of the movie the interest in Dubrovnik from Bollywood lovers in visiting the city is intensifying.
“Forget Game of Thrones I am being bombarded with emails and requests for Fan tours in Dubrovnik,” explained one tourist guide in Dubrovnik. “It doesn’t seem to matter that only a short section was filmed here the interest is huge, we are talking about a gigantic potential market,” he added. A recently released teaser clip for the film has already melted YouTube with almost 9 million hits in a few months.
The film which has been shot in Mumbai, Croatia and Delhi is about Aryan Khanna (Shah Rukh Khan character in the movie) and his biggest fan, a kid called Gaurav who is obsessed with him. Shah Rukh Khan has over 30 million social media followers, 15 million on Facebook and over 18 million on Twitter, and these numbers are growing daily. The publicity for Dubrovnik will undoubtedly open up new, previously untapped markets.