Kiran Rao calls Laapataa Ladies’ box office performance a failure, says, “We weren’t a success”

Filmmaker Kiran Rao has delivered two amazing films to date – Dhobi Ghat and Laapataa Ladies. Despite a 14-year gap between both directorials, managed to click with the audiences. However, both films underperformed at the box office. Her latest directorial – starring Nitanshi Goel, Pratibha Ranta, Sparsh Shrivastava, Chhaya Kadam and Ravi Kishan, managed to find a fan base post its release on Netflix India.

During a recent chat, Kiran got candid about the box office performances of both her films while admitting she considers the BO performance of Laapataa Ladies a failure. Read on.

Kiran Rao on Laapataa Ladies’ box office performance

During a recent interaction with Faye D’Souza, Kiran Rao got candid about the box office performance of Laapataa Ladies. Dubbing the film a failure, the filmmaker 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. 10-15 years later, Laapataa Ladies didn’t do that much more than Dhobi Ghat. So, in some ways, I do feel that sense of failure.”

She continued, “By box office metrics, we weren’t a success. In the conventional sense, we didn’t do hundreds of crores, or even Rs 30, 40, 50 crore. Failure is the way to put it. I do feel responsible that the film didn’t do that well at the box office. I felt it a lot during Dhobi Ghat because we didn’t have any alternate mediums, we didn’t have OTT. So it didn’t get a lot of audience. I do feel that film was different for its time, and very unusual for a theatrical release back then. But other than that, not really. I haven’t felt a deep sense of having failed at something.”

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Kiran Rao further continued, “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. I’m sure most creative people have to face that sense of failure a lot when they don’t achieve something soon enough or they don’t achieve it at all.”

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Also Read: EXCLUSIVE: Pratibha Ranta says “Kaafi fark hai” while talking about the differences working with Sanjay Leela Bhansali and Kiran Rao