the latter film. Khan, Mukerji and Zinta were paid , , and for their roles, respectively (all sums unadjusted for inflation). Zinta was initially reluctant to play her role, as she was unsure she was suited to play a prostitute, but she eventually accepted it at the directors' persuasion. To prepare for it, she visited several bars and nightclubs in Mumbai's red-light areas to study the lingo and mannerisms of sex-workers. Chori Chori Chupke Chupke was made on a budget of . Principal photography started in early 2000 and lasted two months. Location filming, performed by Thomas A. Xavier, took place in both Mahabaleshwar and Switzerland. The film was edited by Hussain A. Burmawala, and Surendra Sodhi composed the background score. Themes The film generated some controversy before and during its release for being one of the only Hindi-language films dealing with the taboo issue of surrogate childbirth in India, in addition to prostitution in India. Surrogacy in the film is not achieved through artificial insemination but sexual intercourse, and author Aditya Bharadwaj argued that the film draws an analogy between surrogacy to prostitution. Anindita Majumdar, author of the book Surrogacy (2018), wrote, "In popular Indian culture, surrogacy has come to be associated with the 2001 Hindi language film Chori Chori Chupke Chupke". According to author Daniel Grey, that Madhubala was a prostitute before becoming a surrogate "reinforces a stereotyped and erroneous popular association between the two roles that has contributed to considerable prejudice on the Subcontinent against women who act as surrogates". According to The Hindu, some of film's scenes were said to have been borrowed from Pretty Woman (1990) and the storyline inspired by Doosri Dulhan (1983). According to Krämer, the similarities between Pretty Woman and Chori Chori Chupke Chupke are limited to replicated scenes in "merely one plot strand among many", in an otherwise different story. In another book by Majumdar, Transnational Commercial Surrogacy and the (Un)Making of Kin in India (2017), she discusses the similarity between Chori Chori Chupke Chupke and Doosri Dulhan. Majumdar describes the surrogate mothers as "fallen women" who are first portrayed as aberrant women with no interest in motherhood, who gradually develop a sense of maternal instinct during the process of pregnancy. Anupama Chopra of India Today described Zinta's character of Madhubala as hooker with a heart of gold, as did academic Lucia Krämer. Sociologist Steve Derné wrote in his book Globalization