Farhan Akhtar was a bratty kid, I thought ‘Yeh kya banayega’: Karan Johar says he had low expectations from Dil Chahta Hai

Karan Johar recalled getting a reality check in the year 2001, when he was overconfident about Kabhi Kushi Kabhie Gham but hadn't yet felt the impact of films such as Lagaan, Gadar, Chandni Bar and Dil Chahta Hai.

Farhan Akhtar and Karan Johar both had films out in 2001.

By: Entertainment Desk

New Delhi | October 17, 2023 10:22 AM IST

3 min read

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After the success of his first film Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, Karan Johar was extremely confident about his second, Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham. Not only had he gathered the greatest star-cast of the era, he had also been granted the biggest-ever budget for a Hindi movie up to that point. But his self-belief shattered when he watched Lagaan and Dil Chahta Hai.

Recalling how he watched all the seminal films of 2021 in quick succession, which gave him a reality check about K3G, Karan said in an interview with Pinkvilla that he was very surprised by how well Dil Chahta Hai had turned out, because he didn’t think director Farhan Akhtar had it in him. The son of Javed Akhtar and Honey Irani, Farhan made his directorial debut with Dil Chahta Hai, which has since emerged as a landmark film for Hindi cinema. Starring Aamir Khan, Akshaye Khanna and Saif Ali Khan, Dil Chahta Hai brought a relatable realism to Hindi films that hadn’t been seen in quite some time.

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Karan said, “That year was very critical for me, not just as a filmmaker, but also as a human being. When you start flying, destiny and circumstances have a way of saying, ‘Stay in your place’. In the beginning of that year, for some reason, I was like, ‘I’m making the biggest film of the year, what’s going to get bigger than this? I’m going to sweep all the awards’. In my head I was thinking this, I wasn’t saying this out loud.”

But, Karan got a reality check when he started watching the other big films of the year. “I watched Lagaan in June, when it released, and I thought I’d seen a cinematic marvel. I felt it would go down as one of the best feature films ever made. I was blown away by it, and I thought, ‘Mine is nothing like…’ And then I saw Gadar the next day, and I went crazy about its ‘commercialness’ and ‘solidness’. The audience was going crazy. I saw Lagaan again, and the theatre had become a cricket stadium. Then I saw Chandni Bar, one of the most respected films of the year, and then I saw Dil Chahta Hai, and I had kind of grown up with Farhan. He was a naughty, bratty kind, and I thought, ‘Yeh kya banayega yaar (How good can his film be)?'”

The ‘syntax of cool cinema’ started with Dil Chahta Hai, Karan said, admitting that he was under the false impression that he was the ‘cool’ guy of the industry prior to that. “By the end of it, from being the front-footed filmmaker, I felt that I was the underdog,” Karan said. Despite all the competition, K3G was still the highest-grossing film of the year, although the critical plaudits went mostly to Lagaan and Dil Chahta Hai.

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