While Bombay Velvet became a case study on what not to do with a big-budget film, director Anurag Kashyap attributed the mediocrity of his ‘most censored film’ to the burden of a huge budget and the pressure to recover costs.
Ranbir Kapoor had called his 2015 film Bombay Velvet ‘a legendary disaster’. Made on a budget of Rs 115 crore and recovering less than half of its cost, the film’s box office journey went down in history as a bitter lesson for producers and filmmakers. But what was the reason for the film’s failure? After all, the film had a stellar cast like Anushka Sharma and Ranbir Kapoor, with Karan Johar making his acting debut in the villainous role.
This was Anurag Kashyap’s leap into the category of big-budget films and it had the backing of his trusted friends and producers Vikas Bahl and Vikramaditya Motwane. Bombay Velvet completes 10 years of its release today.
While the film became a case study of what not to do with a big-budget film, Anurag Kashyap blamed the hefty budget and the pressure to recover costs for the film’s mediocre performance. In an earlier interaction, Anurag shared that the film presented to the audience was not his version but a punched-down film after the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) cut out several intimate scenes between the lead characters of Anushka and Ranbir.
Talking about this in an old interview, Anurag said, “Bombay Velvet is my most censored film. Pahlaj Nihalani (former chairman of the Central Board of Film Certification) deliberately removed all the intimacy between my two characters in the entire film. My characters were two people who couldn’t hold hands, that’s how I wanted to show their love and they keep kissing and talking constantly. He removed all the intimacy from the film. I was very angry. I abused him. I recorded my voice and put it in the film. It is still there.”
After Animal, starring Ranbir in the lead, released in theatres, Kashyap was all praise for Sandeep Reddy Vanga. This led to confusion among Kashyap’s fans as he was seen supporting an anti-women film. However, in his conversation with Zoom, Anurag shared that he admires Vanga for sticking to his word and releasing the over three-hour long film and not letting the producers or any other external entity hamper his vision of the film.
He said, “Sandeep has changed a lot of principles in the film industry. He made a 3 hour 35 minute film. I have been through this, I was asked to shorten Bombay Velvet to 2 hours and 50 minutes and they told me that no one would watch a 3 hour film. A lot of things were censored in the film because it had to get a ‘U’ certificate as the budget was too high. I had no support system. Everyone wanted to recover the cost of the film and have a good opening. Forget the numbers, if you are not able to appreciate your film, who else will?”
He added, “Sandeep has proved all these things wrong. I realised that I should have been stubborn like him. I should have made my own version of the film without listening to anyone and then both success and failure would have been mine.” Later, in a conversation with India Today, producer Vikas Bahl admitted that he had pressured Anurag to make a sober, clean version of the film, keeping in mind the crores of rupees that went into making the film. “I think I failed as a producer. When Anurag was doing the film, I would go to him and say ‘this is a big budget film and we need a ‘U’ certificate, so we can’t do this or that, like a very dark character,'” he said. He agreed that he “disabled” Anurag by putting the burden of recovering money on him. “I failed miserably as a producer because if Anurag had any sense, he would have made his most bizarre film. I disabled him and now I won’t do that again,” he said. Anurag toyed with the idea of casting different actors for the role. Aamir Khan, Hrithik Roshan, Ranveer Singh were considered, but finally Ranbir Kapoor was chosen. Though Ranbir was excited to be associated with the project and gave his all for it, later, after the film flopped, he did not hesitate to reveal the truth and call it not a good film.
In a video shared by Brut India, Ranbir said, “Once you start a film you lose perspective because you surrender to the process. You surrender to filmmaking, you surrender to the character… So Bombay Velvet was something… that deserved such a fate because it was not a good film.” The actor also called it the ‘worst phase’ of his career.
