Aanand L Rai Opens Up About Akshay Kumar’s Raksha Bandhan Box Office Debacle ( Photo Credit – Instagram )
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Raksha Bandhan starring Akshay Kumar and Bhumi Pednekar is a story of a brother and his four sisters. It was built up on the plot of a brother trying to get his sisters to get married against all the societal odds. Aanand L Rai directorial tanked massively at the box office and received quite a mixed response from the audience. Now, the director has spoken about the same in an interview. Scroll below to find out!
Aanand is quite a versatile director who knows how to pick stories and portray the tale. He is the man behind the popular Tanu Weds Manu franchise and films like Raanjhanaa. However, the last couple of releases haven’t been in his favour. He gave Zero and Raksha Bandhan and both of them flopped at the box office.
In an interview with PTI, Aanand L Rai shared, “I was wrong while making ‘Raksha Bandhan’ when I thought let me give them something which is more of India and let me cater to the audience in the B and C tier cities. I was wrong in differentiating between the audiences. That’s not my job. I should focus more on the story rather than selecting the audience to whom I want to cater. This is my learning.”
Talking about his foundation has never been big celebrities but the story, and the director revealed that he made films with them and people loved watching them. Going further in the interview, Aanand L Rai mentioned, “Maybe, I went too smart with ‘Raksha Bandhan’. I was trying to put it in a bracket and that’s wrong.”
Further, Aanand added that even though it was the fastest film that he made, he never was dishonest with it. According to him, it’s the strategy that didn’t work out. He said, “It was my fastest film but I relished it. I never made this film in a rush. I had fun. But I’m thinking hard about what didn’t work. And I’ve understood that In ‘Raksha Bandhan’, the start, middle and ending, the highs and lows, everything was structured. Unfortunately, its emotions were also formatted, which used to work and I thought it would work again. But was I dishonest? No, I was not. I was not living it superficially. There was a strategy which failed.”
The director further shared how neither success ever damages his head, nor failure breaks his heart. But he thinks he has failed his audience who had an expectation from him. And there while playing safe and not gusty with Raksha Bandhan, he failed miserably. He said, “I’m holding on to that. I have learned that I should keep on doing the gutsy work, without thinking of Rs 200 crore or Rs 300 crore. It’s just — cast it right, don’t size it up.”
What do you think about Aanand L Rai’s opinion about Raksha Bandhan? Let us know in the comments!
