Arjun Rampal reacts to Dhaakad’s failure for the first time: It didn’t deserve the kind of numbers that it did

Filmmaking is an art, definitely, but it’s also a business at the end of the day, and Arjun Rampal remembers that. And the usual tendency is that even if an actor performs brilliantly, most of the times the box office number chatter takes over that. Naturally, if a film doesn’t work, the conversation is summed up in that.

Dhaakad, co-starring Kangana Ranaut, was a big-budget film, and Rampal’s last release in cinemas. And it didn’t manage to meet the expectations. Ask him about it, and he says, “It was an expensive film, so yes it does hurt when it doesn’t do well. I don’t think it deserved to do the kind of numbers that it did. People were sceptical at that point of time. Dhaakad was one of the first few films to come out post pandemic. People were maybe scared to go to the theatres.”

However, he mentions in the same breath, a film which it clashed with. “We can’t even say that, Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2 did really well. Maybe we released with the wrong film. Every film has it’s destiny, and you just have to accept it and move on. The reality is the reality. But the film is there, I am proud of it, it is not a film I won’t be proud of. As long as you take that much away from a film, you are in a good space,” adds the 50-year-old, set to be seen next in the film Crack.

He says that films with high budgets of course have the pressure to perform at the box office, and he definitely thinks about the number game otherwise too. “If one has a 250 crore budget film, obviously that film has got that much pressure on it to perform. But content driven films is what I watch. I am into the whole thing of spectacle cinema. That’s my choice. I am very glad Pathaan has done so brilliantly, we all needed it, the industry needed those numbers. You cannot say box office numbers are not important,” he ends.