When Hollywood meets Bollywood, you'd expect a massive cultural shock. Not so, say the folks who made the next Cheetah Girls movie, "The Cheetah Girls One World," which was filmed entirely in India.

"India has the largest filmmaking industry in the world, and I think for all of us, we quickly decided we were going to take Bollywood 101 and we're going to learn the cast of characters there," says Debra Martin Chase, executive producer of the film, which premieres tonight.

"There are no casting agents. There are no agencies such as we know them. So casting is done by relationships, and we had to first figure out the lay of the land, and finally (casting agent) Judy Taylor came and sat in a room in Mumbai for a week and literally, day and night, auditioned people. So it's just different, but we had the most amazing Indian crew."

Everyone was just so helpful on the set," says Adrienne Bailon, who plays Chanel. "I think the one thing we realized was that there was no, like, departments. ... Everybody just wanted to be helpful in anything they could be helpful in. So that was really awesome."

"We brought over a lot of our crews from here in the United States," says Chase. "Mona May did our costumes and (we had) our line producers, we worked with an Indian production company. We liaisoned with them, but by and large, the bulk of our crew was Indian. And the last day, we were all in tears, because they were so dedicated, and we just loved them."

You probably can't get more exotic than the rolling hills of Rajasthan, where "The Cheetah Girls One World" was filmed. And its three stars — Bailon, Sabrina Bryan and Kiely Williams — couldn't believe their ears when they were told the Cheetah Girls' next musical would be shot there.

"After the second movie, and they asked us where we thought we would want to go in the world to shoot another movie, and we kind of said a couple of names, and India was definitely one of them. And then Debra was, like, 'I think that might be possible,' and we were like, 'No way,' " says Bryan, who also cut a rug on "Dancing with the Stars."

Still the three Cheetahs (the fourth, Raven-Symone, is not in this film) were in for a few challenges for which a lifetime of show biz had not prepared them. One of those was riding atop a 9-foot elephant in a basket while warbling a musical number.

"It was scary at first," says Bailon, "definitely it's not something I would ever do if it was not a part of this movie, but it actually gave me an opportunity to do something that I probably would never do on a normal basis. I was, like, 'I can do it.' (Director) Paul (Hoen) got me through it. He was like, 'Adrienne, you CAN do it.' "

They also had to master a new kind of dancing. Choreographer Fatima Robinson explains, "I was trying to blend what we call western dance with classical Indian dance. I had an assistant, an Indian assistant out there, and I basically took class in the very beginning ... it was really just, you know, merging those two worlds together and coming up with some really cool stuff that kids haven't seen here in America. So it was nice."