Abhishek Chaubey says Vidya Balan, Alia Bhatt, Shahid Kapoor slashed their fees to work with him

Chaubey also spoke about the wastage he witnessed while working on big-budget Bollywood films. “While I was assisting I also worked on big-budget Bollywood films and I saw that there was a lot of wastage, sometimes on account of the directors or the stars in it but there was a lot of wastage,” he said.

The filmmaker credited his experience as an assistant director for teaching him the importance of discipline. “One thing that I did learn from my assisting years was how to stay disciplined, and that really helped. Even when I directed films like Ishqiya (starring Vidya Balan, Naseeruddin Shah and Arshad Warsi) and Udta Punjab (starring Shahid Kapoor, Alia Bhatt, Kareena Kapoor Khan and Diljit Dosanjh), relatively… not very small films, the stars in these films did not charge within quotes of their market rates. They all worked for less money,” Chaubey said.

Naseeruddin Shah, Vidya Balan and Arshad Warsi starrer Ishqiya is one of the finest gems of Bollywood. (Express archive photo)

As a producer, Chaubey’s primary concern is to make films that he would want to watch. “When I turned producer, my main stress was that I really wanted to make films that I wanted to watch. And we don’t get enough of those,” he said. Chaubey’s production company, MacGuffin Pictures, has produced films like A Death in the Gunj and Undercurrent. He recalled the experience of producing A Death in the Gunj, which was made on a small budget of Rs 4-4.5 crore.

“We did that in very less money and shot it in Jharkhand. Our producing partner was Studioz IDrream, they were also making a comeback… they had not made a film in a decade… they made a comeback and the film did earn a little money,” Chaubey said.

The film’s selection at the Toronto International Film Festival proved to be a turning point. “When it comes to the distribution side, we were lucky enough that the film was selected for Toronto International Film Festival and we got ourselves a deal. And this is pre-streaming days. Streaming had not mainstream in India that time. We made a deal with Amazon while we were still in Toronto, it was a pretty handsome deal for that time… which covered our production cost,” Chaubey said.

Chaubey acknowledged that luck played a role in the success of his films. “We had made these films without some grand plans, we were just like… let’s just go ahead and make this, and see this and perhaps we will make it to some festival and after that we would be ready to find somebody (to distribute). Earlier this year we made a Malayalam film Undercurrent, where again we had no plans. We made the film and I saw it in the mixing room and it was ready and thought what we were going to do. When it comes to release, we found Centre Picture, which is the biggest distributors in Kochi. I had a meeting with them… watched it, and they loved it and we got them to release. When it comes to mainstream, we pulled it somehow at the last moment. So I would say we were just lucky,” he said.