"My inspiration for 'Shaandaar' is Alia. I wanted to work with Alia Bhatt and it was my only opportunity," he said when asked at an event about his inspiration for doing the Vikas Bahl film.
The opportunity, however, came again for Shahid as he will be seen again with Alia in Abhishek Chaubey's "Udta Punjab", also starring Kareena Kapoor Khan.
"Shaandaar" is one of the most anticipated films of the year, but Shahid says the actors' recent success was responsible for it being considered a 'big' film.
"Honestly, when we signed the film and were shooting for it, Vikas's 'Queen' hadn't released, my 'Haider' hadn't released and Alia's 'Highway' was about to release. So the time when we took up this film, we weren't exciting people. And the year passed, and the films of all three of us were liked by viewers, so 'Shaandaar' became a very big film," he said.
Shahid describes "Shaandaar" as a "very easy, breezy, fun film, the kind where you don't take pressure of anything".
"But we never made 'Shaandaar' from that (big) point of view. We made it because it's a really nice, entertaining film and a fresh concept.
"Vikas has taken a love story and I don't think we've had a destination wedding film before. So we've just gone out there and made the film that it needs to be by just going out there and having fun," Shahid said.
"Shaandaar", which also stars Pankaj Kapur, will release on October 22.
