Riteish Deshmukh breaks down Ved’s phenomenal box office success, reveals no studio would touch it, thanks Salman Khan

“These are crazy, unheard numbers. Sairat was the only (Marathi film) that had done more than Rs 50 crore, and it was a one-off. We never thought we could get into that zone…” he said. “When you make a Hindi film with a large star-cast, you already know where your recoveries are. With Marathi films, it’s extremely difficult to figure out what your recoveries are… When we started making the film, me and Genelia, we didn’t have a studio on board. So, we put in everything that we had into the film. And we hoped that because we were making a film of a certain scale, of a certain visual appeal, the quality of music is great because of Ajay-Atul, and there’s a sensibility that might attract youngsters as well as family audiences… Of course, ever so grateful to Salman bhau for doing that song, that added an immense value to us as a film. Having all these things, we did struggle to get a studio on board.”

He continued, “Fair enough, it unfortunately didn’t work out, but the pressure came onto us. We had to release it ourselves, and everything depended on the box office. If it didn’t work at the box office, it would’ve been a huge setback for Genelia and me, not just financially, but because it was a film that needed to be seen.”

Because they no longer had a studio to share the profits with, it ended up becoming a blessing in disguise, but Riteish said that there was no way that they could’ve known that the film would do so well.

Ved is the second-biggest Marathi language hit of all time, behind Nagraj Manjule’s Sairat, which ended up doing more than Rs 100 crore. Riteish said that the film’s success has been celebrated within the industry, and expressed hope that Marathi movies could become as big as Kannada language film, because the the population that speaks both languages is around the same.