Director Apoorva Lakhia, in a recent interview, spoke about what went wrong with his 2013 action film, Zanjeer which marked the Bollywood debut of RRR star Ram Charan.
Telugu star Ram Charan made his Hindi debut with Apoorva Lakhia’s 2013 action crime film Zanjeer opposite Priyanka Chopra. The film was a remake of Amitabh Bachchan’s 1973 classic of the same name. Unfortunately, the film mostly opened to negative reviews and was declared a major flop. Post that, Ram Charan never took up any Hindi film offers.
Recently, in a chat with Siddharth Kannan, the film’s director Apoorva Lakhia reflected upon Zanjeer‘s failure. He shared that he always makes it a point to analyse when his movies flops, adding that sometimes a film doesn’t do well even though there’s nothing wrong with it.
Speaking about Zanjeer, he said, “I had the biggest star cast, I had the biggest platform. It didn’t work. Getting Ram Charan, getting Priyanka, getting Sanjay Dutt… You name it, we had it. Maybe people didn’t like the hero, maybe it was the wrong time to introduce a South Indian star (in Bollywood). Now, if Ram Charan comes and does a film in Hindi, he’s rocking. It’s unpredictable, but the main thing is to believe in yourself.”
Apoorva admitted that his career got affected by directing high-profile flops.
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The filmmaker revealed, “After Ek Ajnabee and Shootout at Lokhandwala, my two big hits, lot of producers came and offered me money. One producer gave me an expensive watch. But when my movie flopped, his assistant came and asked for the watch back. I returned it with the box. A lot of people asked for their money back, which I returned. Contractually, I wasn’t obligated to do this, because my contract said that I wouldn’t return the signing amount, but I would make a film for them instead. But if a producer doesn’t have confidence in you, then why should I force them to work with me?”
Zanjeer which released in 2013 had Ram Charan stepping into Big B’s shoes and Sanjay Dutt reprising Pran’s role of Sher Khan from the original film.
Apoorva Lakhia’s last Bollywood outing was Shraddha Kapoor starrer Haseena Parkar in 2017. He is currently busy with the promotions of the second season of his web series Crackdown.
