In the tenth and last episode of The Filmy Hustle, hosted by distributor-exhibitor Akshaye Rathi, Ram Gopal Varma and Anurag Kashyap came together for the first time for an interview and as expected, they went down memory lane and raised interesting points on filmmaking like never before. They raised laughs with their stories about the posters of Dil Se (1998) and Company (2002). While Company was directed by Ram Gopal Varma, Dil Se was directed by Mani Ratnam. RGV was one of its producers.
Ram Gopal Varma shares HILARIOUS trivia: “North distributors threw Vivek Oberoi out of Company’s poster; Bharat Shah saw Dil Se poster and said, ‘Yeh toh letter pad lag raha hai; Shah Rukh Khan ko chhupane ka kya matlab hai’?”
Anurag Kashyap revealed, “He had come out with the first poster of Company. It had an established actor, Ajay Devgn and a newcomer, Vivek Oberoi. He put them equally on the poster and a big hoarding was installed in Juhu. He reasoned that, ‘I need people to buy into Vivek Oberoi. I need them to see him as an equal on the poster’. And people did buy.”
Ram Gopal Varma, at this point, narrated, “And guess what happened? Anurag doesn’t know this. I was very happy with my theory and all that of putting a big hoarding of Ajay and Vivek in equal sizes. In the entire North and in Bihar, they threw Vivek out of the poster. And they put Ajay from another film with a gun!”
RGV then shared an anecdote from Dil Se saying, “I made Bharat bhai (financier Bharat Shah) and Mani meet during Dil Se. When the film was releasing, Mani made a poster. It was fully white and there was Shah Rukh Khan seen almost mixed in the clouds. Bharat bhai looked at it and said, ‘Ramu, poster design maanga tha. Yeh toh letter pad bheja hai’! And it actually looked like a letter pad (laughs)!”
RGV remarked, “Now, it’s very easy to say, ‘What does Bharat bhai know about art?’. But the point is, what does the audience know about art? Then Bharat bhai said, ‘Shah Rukh Khan hai film mein. We want people to come and see him. Shah Rukh Khan ko chhupane ka kya matlab hai?’!”
BOLLYWOOD NEWS – LIVE UPDATES
Catch us for latest Bollywood News, New Bollywood Movies update, Box office collection, New Movies Release , Bollywood News Hindi, Entertainment News, Bollywood Live News Today & Upcoming Movies 2025 and stay updated with latest hindi movies only on Bollywood Hungama.
