Raja Shivaji, the Riteish Deshmukh starrer historical drama, has emerged as a massive box office hit. However, the film also received its share of criticism for sub-par VFX. In a recent interview, Abhishek Bachchan, who played a key role in the film, defend Riteish and team against the said criticism.

Speaking to News18, Abhishek said, “Riteish and Genelia (Deshmukh) have made a Marathi film within a very tight budget. A film with Rs 1000 crore budget for VFX as opposed to a film with much smaller budget will look different.”

Also dismissing the idea of comparing Indian films’ VFX with Hollywood, Abhishek added, “They’ve budgets. Just to give you scale, they probably end up spending over Rs 5000 crore just on VFX. We can’t compete with that. We probably work here at one percent of that at best for our VFX. After a point of time, Riteish had to take a call how much time could he give it. Those years will also cost a lot of money. Can a film afford it? You don’t want to burden a film in that way.”

Raja Shivaji additionally featured prominent names like Genelia Deshmukh, Vidya Balan, Sanjay Dutt, Boman Irani, Bhagyashree, and Sachin Khedekar in the ensemble cast.

Abhishek and Riteish have previously worked together in films like Naach, Bluffmaster, Housefull 3 and more.

Meanwhile, Raja Shivaji continues to perform strongly at the box office both in Marathi and Hindi. According to Sacnilk, the historical drama has earned more than Rs 56 crore (nett) so far.