Anurag Kashyap addresses ‘Phantom fiasco’, says he was ‘bored’ of people wanting him to make more gangster movies

Kashyap said, “I’ve liked everything that I’ve done. For me personally, I will not do what I don’t want to do. But sometimes in between, after Psycho Raman came a phase where this whole Phantom fiasco that happened, the lockdown that happened, there were a lot of things going on…” The dissolution of Phantom Studios was announced in 2018. The offbeat studio was founded by Kashyap, Vikramaditya Motwane, Vikas Bahl and Madhu Mantena. Kashyap subsequently founded his new production company, Good Bad Films.

In those years, he deviated from his usual brand of cinema and directed the romantic drama Manmarziyaan and the science-fiction film Dobaaraa, both starring Taapsee Pannu. He said that the only film conceptualised by him during this time was his latest, Almost Pyaar with DJ Mohabbat. “I worked a lot on other people’s scripts. I wrote a lot of other people’s scripts and only one that I wrote was Almost Pyaar with DJ Mohabbat, which was an idea that originated out of nowhere and I wanted to explore that because I was bored of people always expecting me to go back and create another gangster movie. Unless you get something new and exciting that happens why would I do it?” he said.

The first poster for Kennedy was unveiled earlier this week. The film will premiere at Cannes this month. This isn’t the filmmaker’s first trip to the prestigious festival; he previously premiered Gangs of Wasseypur and Raman Raghav 2.0 at Cannes, as well.