Almost Pyaar with DJ Mohabbat

In London, a girl likes a boy a little too much. And, in a parallel universe, there is a boy who likes a girl. The two unrequited love stories, burdened by social status, caste, religion, and inequality, are breathlessly heading toward each other. Two tragic love stories—one musical and an uncanny coincidence—as told by the Guru of Love, DJ Mohabbat.

• Karan Mehta as Yakub Siddiqui / Harmeet Singh
• Alaya F as Amrita Suri / Ayesha Salim Phgura
• Vicky Kaushal as DJ Mohabbat (special appearance)
• Navnindra Behl
• Sapna Pabbi as Sapna
• Arjun Kanungo as male club singer
• Paritosh Sand as Amrita's father
• Mallika Prasad as Amrita's mother
• Raghunath Singh as Police Cop

Almost Pyaar with DJ Mohabbat was written by Kashyap in the early 2010s where the initial story was based on his experiences from his teenage years. He initially wrote the story for Alia Bhatt who was then shooting for her debut film Student of the Year (2012) but scrapped as it was a "scary idea" for everyone as it deals with partriarchal conditioning and parenting; Bhatt would later play a minor cameo role in Ugly (2014).^[7] As Kashyap then prioritised on other projects, his daughter Aaliyah knew about the progress of the project and his interest on making the film. After a casual conversation with his daughter regarding the progress of the project, Kashyap had thought that telling the story based on his teenage period did not as the world had changed. Hence, he had to rewrite the story from the perspective of the current generation, where a family's honour is associated with their children falling in love.^[8] He curated two scenarios set in Himachal Pradesh and London, where one revolved around a Muslim boy and a Hindu girl, and the other revolved around a Pakistani girl and Indian boy, and a central character of a disc jockey would interlink these two stories.^[9][10]

Karan Mehta was cast as the male lead after Aaliyah found her in one of the short films that released in 2016.^[8] Kashyap conducted workshops and training in parkour to hone in with the two principal characters. As one of them having a lisp, Mehta spoke with the locals in Himachal and spent more time with them to understand the nuances of those people living there.^[11] Alaya F was cast even before she made her debut in Jawaani Jaaneman (2020) as Kashyap watched an eight-minute showreel of hers' and got impressed by her acting talent.^[8][9] Kashyap initially wanted the titular character DJ Mohabbat to be a mystery person and the entire film being done through a podcast with the voice of the character, but felt that it needed a face in order to interconnect the two stories. Hence Vicky Kaushal, who worked with the director in Raman Raghav 2.0 (2016) and Manmarziyaan (2018) was cast as the titular character and had not received any renumeration.^[7]

Almost Pyaar with DJ Mohabbat was initially began production in late 2018 and continued for four years due to the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in India.^[7] The film was entirely shot in Dalhousie, India and London. Kashyap considered the film to be a struggle financially, as he had sold most of his assets to make the film. During production, the principal distributor Reliance Entertainment dropped the project, albeit 50 percent of the film being completed.^[12] Having no money to shoot the remaining film, he then showcased the rough edit to Vishal Bhardwaj, Rajkumar Hirani and Imtiaz Ali who provided suggestions to change the structure of the film and add Kaushal's character. Hirani edited the film for two weeks and gave a structure to the film in a certain way, while Ali also provided him certain ideas. Bhardwaj and Gulzar provided dialogues for DJ Mohabbat's character. Kashyap stated that everyone in the industry came together to help him complete the film, hence a longer thanks card was featured in the opening credits.^[7][12]

The film's soundtrack is composed by Amit Trivedi with lyrics written by Shellee.^[13] The album was released through Zee Music Company on 25 December 2022, coinciding with Christmas.^[14]

Almost Pyaar with DJ Mohabbat had its world premiere at the 19th Marrakech International Film Festival in Morocco,^[15][16] and at the Hainan International Film Festival.^[17] The film received a U/A certificate from the Central Board of Film Certification and was theatrically released on 3 February 2023.^[18][19]