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Saiyaara director Mohit Suri responded to recent claims made by industry insiders about how the film’s success has disrupted the landscape. Previously, trade analyst Taran Adarsh claimed that certain members of the film industry were having ‘sleepless nights’ following the film’s blockbuster box office business, while his fellow analyst Komal Nahta said that he knows of a certain male star who was visibly nervous upon learning that the film’s numbers are genuine, and not fudged in any way. Asked about these reactions in an interview with Faridoon Shahryar, Mohit Suri said that if the film’s success has made some people lose a night’s sleep, ‘so be it’.
He said, “The plan wasn’t to disrupt the industry. The idea was to disrupt my own life. I’d made a sequel film before this, and I didn’t make a good film. Suddenly, everyone was ruling me out. You have to understand, if you’ve been in the industry for 17 years, and you make a sequel film with stars and it doesn’t do well, people want to rule you out. I’ve never been there. I was always the young guy on set. A lot of actors who are getting sleepless nights probably ruled me out.”
But, Mohit said, it’s not about them. He said that he didn’t want to get stuck in a rut of making ‘packages’, and wanted to ‘go organic’ instead. He said that films were taken away from him after his previous film, Ek Villain Returns, didn’t do well. He didn’t mention Aashiqui 3, but Mohit was attached to direct that film, and has acknowledged that the script for Saiyaara started out as the Aashiqui project. “The disruption was my own life. I did it my way. Everyone can clearly see that it looks like my kind of film. If other people have got disrupted of it, so be it,” he said.
Previously, in an interview with Faridoon as well, Komal Nahta said that he had received 20 phone calls from industry insiders in disbelief over Saiyaara’s success. “I didn’t take the actor’s name so as not to embarrass them. But whatever I wrote, that he is spending sleepless nights, that he is constantly on calls asking if the numbers are accurate, every word of that article is genuine, I swear. The only detail that I have misrepresented is the number of films that person has done, but only to save them from embarrassment,” he said. Starring Ahaan Panday and Aneet Padda, the movie has made over Rs 500 crore worldwide.
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