How Sidhu Moose Wala’s Hologram Tour Was Made Without Using AI

In 2022, New Delhi company The Concert Production’s founders Sohail Mansuri and Zeeshan Siddiqui were putting finishing touches to the look and feel of Punjabi star Sidhu Moose Wala’s Back 2 Business World Tour when they learned of his assassination.

Siddiqui recounts to Rolling Stone India, “We did his last mega concert at the Coca-Cola Arena in Dubai. His India tour was about to start in June and he died on May 29.” Mansuri was just about to get on a flight to prepare for the on-ground production of the India tour, and held back. “I was just so shocked; he was so young and his popularity grew so much even after [his death],” Mansuri says.

At the suggestion of Harpreet Singh, aka Hunter, founder of tour promoter Platinum Events, Mansuri and Siddiqui began exploring a way to bring Moose Wala back to the stage, this time as a hologram. The idea was audacious, but it came with the blessing of the late artist’s parents and team. With that, The Concert Production began work on the hologram show, attempting to recreate the experience of seeing him perform live.

Hunter pitched the idea inspired by legendary rapper (and Moose Wala’s oft-cited inspiration) Tupac’s hologram performance at Coachella Festival in 2012, which created global waves. Mansuri says, “He came up saying, ‘Let’s do a tribute concert for him, because people are actually in love with him. Let’s do a tour and keep him alive.’”

Three and a half years on, it’s led them to the Signed To God tour, set to kick off on Oct. 8, 2026, at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto, with more shows across North America and Europe to be announced. There are plans to bring the shows to India as well. “Through state-of-the-art 3D holography, fans will see Sidhu walk the stage, make eye contact with the crowd, deliver his powerful lyrics, and relive his most iconic moments. Every performance is synced with live lighting, sound, and stage effects, making the experience feel personal and unforgettable,” a description on the tour website states.

While it’s being marketed as a hologram tour, The Concert Production makes it a point to clarify that the technique is actually called Pepper’s Ghost, which relies on 2D projection. A similar technique has been used for hologram appearances of Tupac, Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Elvis Presley, Ronnie James Dio, and more across the world. Now, Sidhu Moose Wala gets to become the first Indian artist to join the list.

Especially in the age of artificial intelligence, Siddiqui and Mansuri are quick to clarify that no AI was used in the creation of the Signed To God shows. Instead, they actually flew to Italy, worked with a body double and prosthetics team to create a real-life, living, moving model of Moose Wala to capture movements and body language to use for the hologram. “We created a person who is like Sidhu,” Siddiqui says. Incidentally, even the Tupac ‘hologram’ was based off of movements by a trained body double, making it an industry-standard practice.

Considering how all-encompassing the influence of AI has been in recent years, Siddiqui does mention that they attempted to create an AI-generated likeness of the artist around 2024 through an agency in the U.K. “But to be very honest, it was looking very kiddish. It was looking very gimmicky because the reaction, what Sidhu used to do, was not a frequent action with AI. That is the reason we used prosthetics and a body double. We needed him to look exactly how he did, right down to how thick his moustache was. All the detailing has been taken care of,” Siddiqui says.

Holed up somewhere in Italy with a European production and prosthetics team sourced by Platinum Events’ Hunter, Siddiqui says the body double was trained how to walk exactly like Moose Wala, along with his signature moves and gestures. “The prosthetic has been done by a Hollywood artist. The body double appears on the stage exactly how Sidhu used to look. No one can say that he is not Sidhu.” Mansuri adds, “Even the pagdi (turban) guy who ties the pagdi was flown from India. We had a tattoo artist work on all the same tattoos that Sidhu had.”

Mansuri says that they have to be “very skeptical” about every frame and lighting that goes into the Signed To God shows, because the projection “is being seen only from certain angles” to audiences. “Making the hologram [visible] to the whole arena is a very big task. Because of the hologram dispersion, where everyone should be able to see, we have to occupy only that much of the crowd. If the arena is about 10,000 people, we can only occupy about 6,500 to 7,000,” he adds.

The Signed To God tour is something both Mansuri and Siddiqui hail as a milestone for their company, formed in 2020 after the two grew tired of the complacency they faced in concert production. Having worked with the likes of Raftaar, Diljit Dosanjh (whose concerts Siddiqui considers his breakthrough in the music industry), Salim-Sulaiman’s Bhoomi shows, Badshah, DJ Chetas, Bismil, Sid Sriram and others, they have mounted shows featuring everything from colorful, Xylo bands (seen famously at Coldplay’s concerts) to moving stages that even get hydraulically elevated.

For all the scale and technology that goes into their shows, Mansuri notes that the starting point has always been the artist. “If there are no inputs from the artist, we don’t work with them,” he says matter-of-factly. He adds, “We love to work with artists who actually call us and talk to us about what they want, send us references. A lot of artists now put money from their own pocket to make their show better.”

Now, they’re taking on a whole different beast with Moose Wala’s Signed To God tour. They’ve seen a lot of rumor-mongering from fans and punters online, but this is the first time they’ve gone into details about what’s gone into it. “We were very skeptical at first if we’ll be able to do justice to Sidhu in terms of his stage presence. It should not look like a gimmicky thing, that’s one thing we’ve been clear about. We just wanted to create a reality for the entire show where people feel that Sidhu has appeared on stage and he is the one who’s performing.”

This story was originally published by Rolling Stone India.