‘People wanted to see Shah Rukh Khan fall’: Anubhav Sinha says it was fashionable to hate Ra.One, ‘being an SRK fan worked against me’

Anubhav said, “It had become fashionable to run Ra.One down. Also, Shah Rukh had had a massive, uninterrupted run as the undisputed star and king. He actually is. And we like ruins, no? You know, when we go to Rajasthan, to those forts and castles, we like to see the ruins. There’s a vicarious pleasure in that, knowing that, oh, there used to be a king who used to reside here, but he doesn’t exist anymore. So, you know, similarly, they wanted to see Shah Rukh fall. And it sort of temporarily happened with Ra.One.”

Anubhav Sinha admitted that his own admiration for Shah Rukh Khan may have inadvertently worked against him: “I was making the biggest film in the country with a star that I was a fan of, which actually worked against me in the film. Because I was a fan, and I still am. So maybe a lot of things sounded right just because he was saying it.”

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Reflecting on Ra.One’s commercial performance, he recalled the emotional and professional reckoning he faced: “For two years I was deeply affected, but then I started meeting people who had seen the film and who had liked the film. And then you knew the numbers, you knew the numbers weren’t great, but they weren’t disastrous. We were close to Rs 250 crore in 2011. So slowly one got to terms with it.”

Anubhav Singha had earlier spoken about the emotional toll the film took on him. In an interaction with Ulta Chashma UC, Anubhav said, “I meet a lot of people who now tell me they like Ra.One, but at that time, the film was declared a flop. There was a lot of pain after it flopped. I made a film with Shah Rukh Khan and it was a flop, and people didn’t like it at that time. That film broke me emotionally. It took time for me to recover from that.”