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K. Asif wanted to remake Mughal-E-Azam in color but the financers lost their patience for the long time he had taken to make the film. Except two songs and the thirty minutes climax scene, the rest of the movie was in black-n-white. In 2004, the movie was colorized and re-released.

The first colorized Indian classic film, Mughal-E-Azam was released on November 12, 2004. The new version was digitally re-recorded and Dolby enhanced.

In Mumbai, the colorized version was shown in 65 theatres. For the distribution of the colorized version in Mumbai alone, distributor Dinesh Gandhi and Ramesh Sippy paid Rs. 22.5 million. This is the highest price ever paid for any old Indian movie.

The original Mughal-E-Azam was financed by Sterling Investment Corporation. For the coloring of the movie, it spent Rs. 15 million. The whole process took three and half years. Deepesh Salgia was the project manager.

Initially, the company wanted to give the work to Hollywood-based Companies. The companies gave quotations ranging from $12-15 million which was very costly. Finally, Indian Academy of Arts and Animation (IAAA) came in aid. They developed  a special software for the project titled “Effect Plus” for eighteen months. 150 artists in Mumbai and Chennai worked for 10 months for the movie. The cost of the project was Rs. 5- 10 million. You have all seen the final results. Once again it has been proved that India can give quality service at low cost. The tragic thing was IAAA workers were not given their due share of credit. In a function to felicitate the film technicians, IAAA’s name was not mentioned.    

Seeing the final product of the movie, Salgia decided to work on the music of the movie. Naushad, the original music director of the movie, was requested to work on the songs. Aided by Uttam Singh, Naushad re-recorded the songs. The original voices of Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Shamsad Begum, and Lata Mangeshkar were retained but the music was recorded with a new orchestra. The soundtracks and dialogues were remastered in ‘Dolby 6.1 Surround Sound Format’.

The sound mixing of the movie was done in Hollywood. The colorized version was a huge success. The sad thing about the colorized version was that to keep the length of the movie upto three hours, four songs: "Mohabbat ki jhoothi kahani pe roye", "Beqas be karam kijiye", "Ae ishq yeh sab duniyawale" and "Humein kash tumse mohabbat na hoti" were deducted. Famous director, Mahesh Bhatt, was not happy with the colored version. To him the colored film appeared like painting the Red Fort in acrylic emulsion.   

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