'Would like come to New Zealand often, if the journey was shorter', said Salman Khan

The Bollywood fans in Auckland were seen waiting for hours around the Auckland Airport, The Langham or Spark Arena on April 20-21, just to catch a glimpse of the visiting celebrities for the biggest Bollywood show.

While with social media taking the lead, Indian Weekender brought you live updates related to the show—celebrities’ arrival, press conference, rehearsals, and the show itself, yet for those who missed us out on social media, we have got it sorted for you here.

Da Bang The Tour was officially the biggest Bollywood show in New Zealand as declared by Ticketmaster. The organisers say that they sold 98 per cent of the tickets.

Apart from the ticket sales, the show was a big one also in terms of the grandeur of the production, lighting, fireworks, and staging arrangement.

“It was like one of those big award shows that we watch on TV, like IIFA,” said a member of the audience.

The Bollywood celebrities that included Salman Khan, Bipasha Basu, Pabhu Deva, Maniesh Paul, Badshah and Daisy Shah arrived on Thursday, April 20 while Sonakshi Sinha landed in New Zealand on Friday, April 21.

They performed to an almost full house show at the Spark Arena in Auckland. The fact that was liked by the most of the people was that Salman Khan was seen on stage for the maximum time.

While the screams and cheers were the loudest when Salman Khan came on the stage with a power-packed entry, his comedy segment with Maniesh Paul made everyone laugh to their bits.

The artists made the audience be a part of the show not only by watching it but also interacting with the celebrities, be it Bipasha Basu, Salman Khan or Maniesh Paul.

The dancing legend Prabhu Deva’s solo opening act on Urvashi Urvashi was a delight to watch. His dance acts with Sonakshi Sinha and Salman Khan made many groove in the audience.

It became very difficult to stop people from leaving their seats when Badshah came on stage and entertained the audience with his lakk-shaking songs.

The highlight of the show was the grand finale act where Salman performed with all the other stars one by one and people saw the magical jodis of Salman-Sonakshi, Salman-Bipasha, Salman-Prabhu, and Salman-Daisy and then everyone together on the stage.

It was surely one of the best organised Bollywood show in New Zealand featuring artist of this calibre. Speaking to Indian Weekender, the show-goers said that it was an absolute value for their money and they would like to see more such shows in New Zealand.

When asked if he would be visiting New Zealand in future to shoot a movie, Salman said that he would like to consider it but “if you can shift New Zealand closer to India”. He said that the flight journey is too long to come to NZ as there is no direct flight between India-New Zealand.

“I have come here before for a show and to shoot an ad film many years back. If we can come for a 2-minutes ad film, we can surely come to shoot an entire movie. But the flight is too long,” he said during the press conference at The Langham, Auckland on April 20.

With Bollywood lovers growing in numbers in the country and Bollywood movie-market in NZ growing the fastest in the world, a direct flight would undoubtedly increase the number of Bollywood films coming to New Zealand for shooting and hence will boost the New Zealand tourism.

Indian Weekender also spoke with Salman Khan regarding his upcoming movie Tubelight, which, as per the local distributor, is going to be the biggest Bollywood release this year.

The interview will be telecasted soon. Till then, those who could not watch the show or even those who did, you can visit Facebook.com/IndianWeekender and watch the snippets of the grand Bollywood night that Auckland witnessed after a long time.

Or just watch all of them here :)