Anupam Kher’s film “Tanvi The Great” released alongside Yash Raj Films’ “Saira.” Directed by Mohit Suri and starring newcomers Anit Padha and Ahaan Pandey, “Saira” became one of the biggest hits of the year, “Tanvi The Great” was “pushed aside” in the storm created by “Saira.” During a friendly conversation in the latest edition of Expresso, Anupam Kher acknowledged the failure of his film “Tanvi The Great” and explained how actor Mohit Suri’s film replaced it. Speaking to Anant Goenka, Executive Director of the Indian Express Group, Anupam said, “I worked for four years, one year on writing and one year on music. I also wrote and directed the film. The day Yash Raj Films’ ‘Saira’ was being made and the film was fully released, I was completely devastated. I felt very sad, not only for myself, but also for the new actors I had recruited from my film school. Nearly 200 people worked on the film.”
Anupam explained that his film ran into financial trouble, leading him to turn to his friends for help. “The film’s financier ran away a month before release. It’s a bad film. So I called my doctor, lawyer, and fellow friends. They gave me money. We had its world premiere at a film festival. We went to New York where Robert De Niro watched the film until the interval and loved it. We even showed the film to the President of India.”
He further said, “Everything was going well, but the world wanted to see a love story, and rightly so. There hadn’t been a young, teenage love story in a long time, and the system here is that even if you release a film with 400 superstars, if the other film does very well, they drop their film. So, it was a defeat that had a deep impact on me.”
Later, when Anupam was asked which film’s success surprised him the most, he replied, “Saiyaara. Even Aditya Chopra was surprised, everyone was surprised, right… Thankfully, Aditya Chopra and Yash Chopra are part of my family; I grew up in cinema with them. If it had been anyone else, it would have been very sad.” According to Sailk, Saiyaara grossed ₹569.75 crore at the worldwide box office.
