Kiran Rao returned to the director’s chair nearly after 14 years after her debut film, Dhobi Ghat. Her latest directorial film, Laapataa Ladies starred Sparsh Shrivastava, Pratibha Ranta, Nitanshi Goel and, Ravi Kishan in the key roles. Months after its theatrical release, the film was available to watch on the streaming platform and got immense love from the audiences.
However, the film couldn’t do wonders at the box office. Recently, Kiran Rao called the box office of her directorial a ‘failure.’
Kiran Rao on Laapataa Ladies’ not performing well at the box-office
While speaking to Faye D’Souza, the filmmaker reflected on the performance of both her films.
She said, “In some ways, both these films (Dhobi Ghat and Laapataa Ladies) haven’t done great at the box office. Dhobi Ghat, in fact, did some big business for its time. Ten-15 years later, Laapataa Ladies didn’t do that much more than Dhobi Ghat. So, in some ways, I do feel that sense of failure. By box office metrics, we weren’t a success.”
“In the conventional sense, we didn’t do hundreds of crores, or even ₹30, 40, 50 crore,” she further added. In her view, “failure” is the way to describe it, as she felt “responsible” about the film not performing well at the box office.
Kiran Rao on Dhobi Ghat’s underperformance at the box-office
Kiran recalled how she felt it a lot during the release of Dhobi Ghat as there were not any alternate mediums like OTT. Thus, she expressed her belief, stating that the film couldn’t get a lot of audiences and opined that it was “different” for its time and “unusual” for a theatrical release back then. However, she never felt a deep sense of failure at something.
Kiran Rao on “failure” as a creative person
“I think failure in the sense that I felt that everyday failure. In 10 years, I’ve been working relentlessly. I’ve had really busy days continuously. After my first film, I thought my second film would come soon. But that soon just didn’t come. It got me on a daily basis. The empty page, the inability to put that full stop and say ‘the end.’ It was something I really struggled with in these 10 years, “she shared further, adding her view stating that most creative people must also be facing that sense of failure when they don’t achieve something early in their lives or don’t achieve it all.
Laapataa Ladies is currently streaming on Netflix.
