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Though R Balki has directed several films since, his debut project Cheeni Kum (2007), starring Amitabh Bachchan and Tabu, continues to hold a special place in the hearts of fans. The film, which tells the story of an elderly self-centered restaurant owner-cum-chef who falls for a much younger woman, was shot entirely in London and received both critical acclaim and commercial success upon its release. Interestingly, Cheeni Kum achieved a higher profit ratio than another big-budget movie bankrolled by the same producer, despite the latter featuring a large cast of many Bollywood A-listers. Reflecting on the making of Cheeni Kum, Balki recently revealed how the team managed to complete the film by borrowing equipment from the sets of the big-budget movie, which was Nikkhil Advani’s Salaam-e-Ishq.
Recalling being overjoyed when Amitabh Bachchan agreed to star in the film, Balki eagerly shared the news with his friend Sunil Manchanda, a fellow advertisement producer who had previously backed a few films. “Sunil was looking very serious and said, ‘When do we start?’ I asked, ‘What do you have to do with it?’ He replied, ‘Who else do you think is going to produce this?’ I asked him if he was surem and he said, ‘of course.’ Though Cheeni Kum was a small budget film, I didn’t understand the economics of cinema at that time,” he shared during a session at MIT World Peace University.
“In those days, to shoot a whole film in London shoot would cost Rs 7-8 crore. That was a big budget, given that ours was a film with a small setting. Sunil didn’t say anything and I didn’t know what he was trying. Then I realised, he was doing a big film with 10 stars called Salaam-e-Ishq and was shooting it simultaneously. It was made for huge bucks of some Rs 60-70 crore. He was going to produce that in London and had tied up with another studio. He told them, ‘If you want Salaam-e-Ishq, you have to take Cheeni Kum as well.’ So, I was like a discount offer,” Balki joked. He added that he took a three-month leave from his position as chairman of the advertising agency Lowe Lintas (India) to shoot the movie. The agency agreed to let him take the time off only because he wasn’t earning any remuneration from the film.
“So, I went to London thinking I got a producer and everything else. And only after reaching there I realised how tough it was to fund a film like this. We didn’t have money to hire a jib. They were shooting Salaam-e-Ishq in Trafalgar Square and when it was a break there, the jib used to be transported to the Cheeni Kum set without even a focus puller. We had just one camera,” he said. When asked if having a massive star like Bachchan didn’t help their situation, Balki said, “The aura of Amitabh Bachchan had nothing to do with what these studious thought would become blockbusters then. He was a Rs 500-crore star to me, but that’s not how they saw this film.”
Also shot in London during the same time as Cheeni Kum, Salaam-e-Ishq featured Salman Khan, Priyanka Chopra, Anil Kapoor, Juhi Chawla, John Abraham, Vidya Balan, Akshaye Khanna, Ayesha Takia, Govinda, Shannon Esra, Sohail Khan and Isha Koppikar in key roles, and explored the love stories of six couples. He also shared that Cheeni Kum, which was done almost like a complimentary item, became more successful.
“When the films were released… this is the beauty of the cinema industry… the film that was done as a complimentary item made up for its budget and Salaam-e-Ishq bombed. The studio that bought it as a discount recovered a lot of money from my producer through Cheeni Kum. It’s very strange how it could have gone the other way around too. In cinema, one can know what’s right only after a film succeeds. No one can say what works prior to release,” he added.
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