This National Award-winning filmmaker became an alcoholic after box office failure of his much-anticipated film

National Award-winning director Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, whose sports biopic drama Bhaag Milkha Bhaag completed 10 years yesterday, on June 12, had once faced a dark, depressing, and dull phase in his life. After Aamir Khan-starrer Rang De Basanti broke multiple records in 2006, Rakeysh’s next release Delhi-6, starring Abhishek Bachchan and Sonam Kapoor was highly-anticipated. 

The 2008 social drama Delhi-6 took a good opening at the box office and earned decent on the weekend. However, due to negative reviews, the film witnessed a crash Monday onwards, and the movie tanked at the box office. As Bollywood Hungama reported, Delhi-6 earned only Rs 30.76 crores nett. 

Now in the latest episode of Rahman Music Sheets, Rakeysh revealed that the Delhi-6 debacle affected him deeply, and he went into alcoholism. The director revealed that he couldn’t cope with the failure, and it was a major heartbreak for him. He said that he become an alcoholic for six months, followed by a huge outcry against the film. “I just wanted to sleep and not get up. There was a spasm, a gap, which I fell into. It was like a black hole Then one morning I woke up and realised that I got to do something about it, that I can’t just get into a Devdas mode.” 

While Mehra was coping with failure, he called cinematographer Binod Pradhan to shoot a different beginning, ending and a few other portions in the next three days. A new version of Delhi-6 was put together and sent to Europe, and it was screened at Venice Film Festival, and that healed the incompleteness in Rakeysh a bit. 

The director is not sure whether the second version of Delhi-6 would ever see the day of the light in OTT, as the film is not in their hands. The director said that re-releasing the film would involve commercial exercise, but he is ready to pay for it so that the audience could see the other version of Delhi-6.