Shamshera, starring Ranbir Kapoor in his first dual role as the titular character and his son Balli, was released on July 22 and opened to mixed and negative reviews. It was reportedly made on a massive budget of Rs 150 crore but managed to collect around Rs 60 crore at the ticket windows resulting in a huge box office failure.
Now, in a recent interview, Anurag Kashyap has shared his thoughts on why the Karan Malhotra directorial failed and added that the period actioner, also featuring Sanjay Dutt, Vaani Kapoor, and Saurabh Shukla, Ronit Roy, and Ashutosh Rana among others, might have worked three years ago.
Speaking to Galatta Plus, the filmmaker said, "In Bollywood, cinema is largely controlled by those people and that too second generation that has grown up in trial rooms. They have not lived life so the referencing is based on cinema. So what is not on screen can't be cinema to them."
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Anurag concluded, "The biggest problem with YRF is that trial room effect. You take a story and you want to make a Pirates of the Caribbean out of it so it becomes Thugs of Hindostan. You take a story and you want to make Mad Max: Fury Road out of it, it becomes Shamshera. The same Shamshera would have worked three years back, at least much more than how it has worked on. Now, people are exposed to OTT."
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For the unversed, Ranbir Kapoor and Anurag Kashyap collaborated on the period crime thriller Bombay Velvet in 2015. Also starring Anushka Sharma, Manish Choudhary, Kay Kay Menon, and Karan Johar in his full-fledged acting debut, the film estimated to be made on a budget of Rs 120 crore was a massive failure as it collected around Rs 40 crore at the box office.
