Rani Mukerji Says Staff at YRF Were 'Sad' After Series of Flops: 'SRK's Pathaan Stood Test of...'

Thomidi

Editor

posted on 8 months ago — updated on 1 second ago

73
views

Rani Mukerji opened up about films that did not work at the box office after the Covid-19 induced lockdown.

Rani Mukerji opened up about the atmosphere at the Yash Raj Films camp after the production house witnessed a series of flops. Post the Covid-19 lockdown, YRF released a few movies and they did not perform as expected. These included Rani Mukerji’s Bunty Aur Babli 2, Ranveer Singh’s Jayeshbhai Jordaar, Akshay Kumar’s big budget film Samrat Prithviraj and Ranbir Kapoor’s highly anticipated film Shamshera. These films released in 2021 and 2022, and drew lesser audience than expected. YRF eventually got its big break at the box office with Shah Rukh Khan’s Pathaan.

Speaking about the trying times at a FICCI Frames event, Rani Mukerji said that everyone at YRF was sad after the failure of these films. She said that it was Pathaan that came and changed the game for the studio. “It was like complete depression. People in our company were sad. The whole conviction of Adi that my films will be released theatrically… We thought that there would be divine intervention and he would be rewarded for his conviction of releasing his films theatrically… ‘Pathaan’ changed the entire thing for Yash Raj and it became the highest grossing film,” she said, as reported by PTI.

“Filmmakers need to have more faith in the product that they make, and they should believe in what they make. They should stand with each other to make that change. ‘Pathaan’ stood the test of time, and it opened the floodgates for people going into cinemas,” she added, while speaking about the Shah Rukh Khan film which clocked in over Rs 1000 crore box office collection worldwide.

She also said that her husband, YRF head Aditya Chopra was being advised to release his films directly on OTT, considering the space blew up during the pandemic-induced lockdown. However, Aditya held his ground on releasing his films only on the big screen.

“He was being offered a lot of money to release it on OTT… My husband took a brave call and said, ‘I would not release any of these films on OTT because I believe in the power of Indian cinema of what it does theatrically’… All of those films flopped because post pandemic, the way audiences were watching content changed overnight because of OTT,” Rani noted.