Not long ago, the splashy success party planned for Padmaavat aboard a fancy yacht was suddenly cancelled, as its maker Sanjay Leela Bhansali had supposedly fallen ill. Fact remains that the director of this hugely successful magnum opus, is against the idea of celebrating itself.

He shares, “There is so much pain behind that success. We all know what the film and our entire team had to go through. There was a time when we thought we might not be able to release the film at all. But God was with us. And we managed to miraculously cross every hurdle.”

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Now, even though the film has crossed the Rs.300-crore mark at the box office, Bhansali will not make a song and dance of its whopping success. His reason – too much attention is focused on the profit line. Says the filmmaker, “We give too much attention to numbers at the box office. Rather than making the films we want to, we are constantly looking at what works at the box office. If I had thought of the box office I wouldn’t have made Padmaavat.”

He believes his historical tale has none of the so-called ingredients of a box office success. What’s more, he cast one of the most successful young stars as a villain. “If I had thought of box office, I’d have never made Khamoshi: The Musical or Saawariya,” he points out.
Interestingly, even though he is hugely vindicated by the success of his period drama, Padmaavat, the films that find the softest spot in his heart are Khamoshi and Saawariya. He explains that given a chance, he would want to remake these two films of his which failed to find box office success. “The fact that they didn’t get wide commercial success could have a bearing on my partiality towards them. I’d love to remake them and correct the mistakes,” he declares.