Hrithik Roshan reflects on Vikram Vedha’s box office failure, says film was too ‘cerebral’ for his fans, admits he’s ‘recalibrating’ future
Hrithik Roshan dissected the financial underperformance of his recent film Vikram Vedha, a big-budget two-hander in which he starred opposite Saif Ali Khan. Directed by the husband-wife duo Pushkar Gayatri, the film was a remake of their own 2017 Tamil language hit, starring Vijay Sethupathi and R Madhavan.
In an interview with Galatta Plus, Hrithik described Vikram Vedha as a ‘cerebral film’. He said, “It is a film that does not make you cry; it doesn’t have the heart of a Super 30, it doesn’t have the sex appeal of a War, it doesn’t have the song and dance of Bang Bang. It’s cerebral.”
Hrithik said that he has discovered that 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 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 kind of films, I have to treat them different, as in myself — economically, budget-wise, cost-wise.”
He continued, “I say this now, that I will think twice before doing a role which 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.”
Produced on a reported budget of Rs 100 crore, made only Rs 80 crore in India and Rs 135 crore globally. Next up, Hrithik will return to more familiar space with the action film Fighter, which will reunite him with his Bang Bang and War director Siddharth Anand.
