Saif Ali Khan opens up about Tanhaji’s success at the box office

Bollywood megastar Saif Ali Khan has delivered a number of hit films throughout the course of his career but the actor has had his fair share of failures as well.

Speaking about his latest film Tanhaji, performing well at the box office, Saif Ali Khan during an interview with journalist Anupama Chopra during India Today’s e-conclave session, opened up about the film being expected to underperform.

“There are certain aspects to the film. It’s highly patriotic film and ticks all the boxes when it comes to being larger than life. It’s probably on paper, if there’s any film of mine that was expected to do this good, this was it. But no one thought Tanhaji could do this box office performance,” he said.

Shedding light on how he stirred trouble after pointing out the film in inaccurate historically, Saif said: “For some reason I didn’t take a stand… maybe next time I would. I was very excited to play the role because it’s a delicious role. But when people say this is history; I don’t think this is history. I am quite aware of what the history was.”

“I would really like to a part of a film industry that would take a stand that wouldn’t make mass kind of films like that. Films that would rather say ‘hey this is what history is’ rather than mould it to certain kind of belief. But people say that is what runs and that’s what’s given it the extra kind of bump, I mean it’s more than just action movie. There’s an idea there that seems to have caught on, but certainly a dangerous idea.”

The comments had reportedly irked producer of the film and actor Ajay Devgn who when asked about the remarks at an event, said: “Bohot naaraaz tha. Uske ghar gaya, usko maine bohot maara. Taangein tod di uski, aaj kal chal bhi nahi paa raha hai (I was very upset. I went to his house and beat him up. I broke his legs and he is not even able to walk nowadays).”