Anupam Kher’s second directorial, Tanvi The Great released alongside Mohit Suri’s Saiyaara earlier this year. The veteran actor-director said that he was depressed when the romantic-musical ‘wiped-out’ his film at the box office.
In a recent interview with Screen, Anupam said, “I worked for four years on this film — one year of writing, one year of music. I wrote and directed the film. We released the film on the same day as Yash Raj Films’ Saiyaara, and it got completely wiped out. It depressed me. It made me feel very sad, not just for myself, but for the new actor whom I took from my acting school, and for the almost 200 people who worked on the film.”
Anupam recalled how the film was screened at Cannes Film Festival and was seen by legendary Hollywood star Robert De Niro till the interval. He revealed the struggles to mount it when the financer ran away a month before the film was set to be released. “It’s a costly film, so I called my friends who are doctors, lawyers, etc. They gave me the money. Everything was going fine, but the world wanted to see a love story — and rightfully so. A young, teenage love story had not come for a long time, and the system here is that even if you release the film in 400 theatres, if another film is doing very well, they will remove your film. So it was a failure which was very heartbreaking for me,” he said.
Tanvi The Great starred debutante actor Shubhangi Dutt as a young autistic girl who wants to join the Indian army in order to fulfil the dream of her father. It also starred Anupam, Arvind Swami, Iain Glen, Boman Irani, Jackie Shroff, and Pallavi Joshi in pivotal roles.
Clashing at the box office with Saiyaara, which went on to become a blockbuster, Tanvi The Great barely managed to earn Rs 2.54 crore, turning out to be a huge failure.
