Over the time period of his career, Ajay Devgn has impressed fans with his performances in a variety of films. He has had his share of failures and successes at the box office. However, there is one of his films that made makers lose Rs 22 crore.
The film we are talking about was a period drama and was rejected by many superstars like Sunny Deol and Aamir Khan. Though the film flopped miserably at the box office, it earned two national awards. It is none other than The Legend of Bhagat Singh.
The Legend of Bhagat Singh is a biographical period film directed by Rajkumar Santoshi. The film is about Bhagat Singh, a revolutionary who fought for Indian independence along with fellow members of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association. Despite an ensemble cast of Ajay Devgn, Amrita Rao, Raj Babbar, Sushant Singh, D. Santosh, and Akhilendra Mishra, the film failed at the box office and failed to recover even its budget.
In a recent interview, Ramesh Taurani, the producer of the film talked about the reason behind the film's failure and told Showsha, "It didn’t do well because back then five Bhagat Singh films were being made, out of which the Sonu Sood one released a week before us and our film clashed with Sunny and Bobby’s 23rd March 1931: Shaheed. The other film was never finished, despite being filmed. The production controller of JP Dutta made it, but that one was never released, then there was another one made by Ramanand Sagar, which was released on Doordarshan directly, a year later.”
Ramesh Taurani further revealed that his production company suffered a loss of Rs 22 crore and said, "Puri company ki economy hil jaati hai (the company’s entire economy is shaken). That time it cost us Rs 27 cr, and we only recovered Rs 5 cr out of that. So the loss was of Rs 22 cr but we got critical acclaim of the highest order, and went on to win all the honours, including the National Film Award, but it was a huge financial loss. We paid everyone back. The risk was ours, but the work was theirs. We knew multiple films were being made on this and yet we took a call because of our script.”
Despite failing at the box office miserably, the film won two National Awards including Best Feature Film in Hindi and Best Actor for Ajay Devgn. The Legend of Bhagat Singh has been considered one of Santoshi's best works.
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