Amitabh Bachchan injures rib cartilage while shooting for upcoming sci-fi film. What exactly happened?

Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan recently got a muscle tear to his rib cartilage while shooting an action scene in Hyderabad for his upcoming film Project K. After receiving medical aid and a CT scan in Hyderabad’s AIG Hospital, Big B flew back to his home in Mumbai where he is currently resting.

Is he alright now? 

The 80-year-old shared his health update on the blog ensuring that his legion of fans don’t panic (Bachchan is one of those actors who becomes the subject of frequent death scares). 

The blog post also mentioned that the film’s production will naturally be delayed as recovering from the muscle tear would take weeks. 

What was the movie? 

Bachchan got injured while shooting a scene for Project K, the working title of an upcoming sci-fi film written and directed by Telugu filmmaker Nag Ashwin. Being simultaneously shot in Telugu and Hindi, Project K’s ensemble includes Bachchan along with Deepika Padukone (who will be making her Telugu debut), Prabhas, and Disha Patani. 

With an expected release date of January 12, 2024, Project K is being promoted as one of the most expensive Indian movies with its budget being approximately Rs 500 crore. Production started in July 2021 in a futuristic set constructed at Hyderabad’s famous Ramoji Film City. As of now, there are no details of the plot but a poster was recently released. 

The poster which seems to bear influences of Blade Runner 2049’s desert landscape and Oblivion’s costume featured three armed people pointing their weapons at a gigantic statue’s hand. 

Was Big B ever injured earlier?

While Bachchan still faced a relatively minor injury on Project K, his time filming an action scene in Coolie could have cost him his life. On July 26, 1982, Bachchan and his co-star Puneet Issar were shooting a fight scene where the former was supposed to fall on a table. 

Unfortunately, Bachchan miscalculated the timing of his jump, an error that resulted in an internal abdominal injury. He was instantly transferred to a Mumbai hospital while a wave of gloom crept up on Bachchan’s fans. The injured star received over 60 bottles of blood while the actor, as he has mentioned himself, entered a “coma-like situation” and “was clinically dead for a few minutes”. 

The on-set injury was iconic as it unintentionally served as good promotion for Coolie which released a year later. In fact, with the audience sympathy that the on-set accident generated, director Manmohan Desai chose to replace his original morbid ending of Bachchan’s character dying to a more optimistic conclusion, one where the leading man survives with a hospital operation. 

Coolie became the highest-grossing Bollywood film of 1983…