Raja Shivaji, directed by Riteish Deshmukh (also it’s lead actor) has struck gold at the box office. As it continues to run successfully in cinemas, he weighed in on the chatter around the epic’s rumoured ₹100-crore budget on the latest episode of The Right Angle, in conversation with Sonal Kalra, Chief Managing Editor, Entertainment and Lifestyle.
When asked if there’s pressure as the maker that the film should open big as the people discuss it’s high budget, he remarked, “About the figures floating around about Raja Shivaji’s budget, only the producers know the real budget. The last thing we need to do as filmmakers is to discuss the budget of a film because it doesn’t affect anything.”
According to him, conversations around actors’ fees and budgets have become unnecessarily central to film culture today. He questioned, “Budget se kya lena dena hai? If someone asks me the budget, I ask them ‘how much are you paying for a ticket to watch it?’ They say ‘ ₹100′ or ‘Rs250-300’, I reply that’s the budget. One should stop talking about it. Let it be magical, you just go and experience the film.”
Riteish further recalled his childhood experiences of watching films in a theatre.
“When I would go to watch Amitabh Bachchan ji’s films like Sholay in my childhood, I would never think ‘iska budget kya hai?’ I just wanted to have the big screen entertainment,” he shared.
The actor feels the industry itself is responsible for fueling public curiosity around numbers, “We would never know how much films collected. Unfortunately, that’s the game today. People wonder how much actors charge for films… it’s our mistake, we feed these numbers. Those who feel this is right, it’s okay. We have made seven films so far in Marathi, we have never revealed the budget of our films.”
