Vivek Agnihotri has praised Shah Rukh Khan for the success of his recent film Pathaan, which has broken virtaully every box office record in the history of Hindi cinema. The filmmaker praised Shah Rukh for the way he marketed Pathaan and took on the film’s responsibility but also added that a part of the ‘credit’ for the film’s success should go to those who protested against it.
Pathaan, directed by Siddharth Anand, also stars Deepika Padukone and John Abraham. The film is already the seventh-highest-grossing Indian film of all time and is on course to cross the Rs 1000-crore barrier. The film faced several protests and calls for boycott before its release but the controversies did not affect its box office performance.
Speaking on The Carvaka Podcast, Vivek Agnihotri discussed the box office success of Shah Rukh Khan’s Pathaan, which has earned over Rs 900 crore worldwide. Attributing the film’s success to Shah Rukh, Agnihotri said, “Pathaan worked purely because of the charisma and fan following of Shah Rukh, the way he marketed it and the way he took it on his shoulders that ‘it is my film and I am responsible for it’, which is pretty good.”
However, the filmmaker added that part of the success was also due to the publicity the film got due to the protests and calls for boycotts against it. He added, “I also think that some credit should also go to people who were making stupid statements against the film and people who were unnecessarily protesting and asking for boycott. These are different people from regular ‘boycott Bollywood gang’. There is one kind that is always saying ‘boycott Bollywood’ for everything for many years. These were new players in the market and there was no need for them to do this. There were some violent factors who were saying we will burn this and burn that and that, I think, also contributed to this. And of course, our media channels.”
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Agnihotri’s previous film The Kashmir Files was a huge success itself, grossing Rs 341 crore worldwide on a budget of just Rs 15 crore. The director is currently busy filming his next – The Vaccine War.
