Ranveer Singh really wanted to do Bombay Velvet, had memorised dialogues: Anurag Kashyap on why Ranbir Kapoor replaced Ranveer

Anurag Kashyap explained that even though Ranveer Singh was very keen to do the film, they couldn't make it happen.

New Delhi | September 15, 2023 10:59 AM IST

3 min read

Ranveer Singh was dropped from Bombay Velvet after the film was sold at a high cost. (Pic: Ranveer/Instagram)

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Anurag Kashyap has made many memorable films in his career but the Bombay Velvet (2015) debacle still weighs on him. In a recent interview, Anurag said that Ranveer Singh was really keen to do the film and had even memorised all the dialogues of the film but the budget was blown up by then and it wasn’t feasible to make the film with Ranveer anymore. The director added that since then, he has a lot of “guilt” about it and that is one of the reasons he has not collaborated with Ranveer since then.

“He really wanted to do Bombay Velvet. He had even memorised all the dialogues,” he told Bollywood Bubble. Anurag shared that the film had a smaller budget when it started but it then got sold at a much higher cost and wasn’t “sustainable” anymore. “I was not a part of the selling. When the film got sold at a high cost, it wasn’t sustainable,” he said. The film was eventually made with Ranbir Kapoor. Ranveer had delivered Band Baaja Baraat till then but was still to cement his position in the film industry. His next film Ladies Vs Ricky Bahl had not done as expected.

“I tried very hard. I tried so hard that I even postponed the shoot of Bombay Velvet and shot Ugly, hoping things will get right in that time because Ranveer also, at that time, started doing Lootera. So I waited,” he recalled. In a chat with Karan Johar on Koffee with Karan, Ranveer had said that his star power couldn’t “justify the budget” which is why he was “unceremoniously dropped.” He said, “I was unceremoniously dropped because at the time I couldn’t justify the budget. My star value wasn’t high. But things have changed.”

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Anurag shared that the film was “impossible to take off” if he had retained Ranveer and said that everyone advised him that he was “wrong in chasing it.”

When asked why he has not collaborated with Ranveer since then, Anurag said, “I have tried to but I also have my own guilt. I feel like I should have cut down my cost but I didn’t understand a lot of things back then, now I get that.”

He added, “There was a time when I reached out to him but he was dealing with his own issues and I was in a desperate phase so I said, ‘you deal with your things, I’ll move on’ but I keep in touch with him. He killed it in Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani so I complimented him.”

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