Hrithik Roshan on Vikram Vedha failure: Maybe it was not something people like to see me do

Hrithik Roshan's last film Vikram Vedha didn’t fare well at the box office. The actor, in a recent interview, talked about the film’s commercial failure and said that maybe people don’t like him doing such roles. Labelling the film as “cerebral”, he also said that the film didn’t have the heart of a Super 30, the sexiness of War, or the song and dance sequences of Bang Bang.

Vikram Vedha, directed by filmmaker duo Pushkar-Gayatri, was a Hindi remake of a Tamil film of the same name. The original had R Madhavan and Vijay Sethupathi in the lead roles. Apart from Hrithik, the Hindi version starred Saif Ali Khan and Radhika Apte.

Talking to Galatta Plus, the actor said that he thinks his fans perhaps don’t want him to step outside his star image and that he has chosen to ‘recalibrate’ after the film’s commercial disappointment. He said, “Vikram Vedha was released, and it didn’t fare well at the box office at all. And the feedback that I got was… Of course, there are different parts of me that are conflicted about what I should learn from this, and I think it’ll dawn on me much later, but right now I know that it is not, maybe, something that people like to see me do. Maybe I’m not allowed to do roles where I’m not catering to my fans who want to see me in a certain film, with a certain backdrop, in a certain way. If I choose to do those kinds of films, I have to treat them differently, as in myself — economically, budget-wise, cost-wise.”

“I say this now, that I will think twice before doing a role that does not cater to the fans, but of course, when I hear a story, the actor in me takes precedence, and I always say yes if I can’t say no. But there is a part of me that is aware, that maybe the way to go is films like War and Fighter, and try to find the artist in me within these spaces. I’m also hopeful that this might not be the reason, that this was not a film that was meant for a Rs 300 crore box office. I just have to recalibrate,” he added.

Made at a budget of about Rs 100 crore, Vikram Vedha could only mint Rs 80 crore in India and about Rs 135 crore overseas. When it comes to other projects, Hrithik will be seen opposite Deepika Padukone in Siddharth Anand’s Fighter.