Anurag Kashyap Calls Bombay Velvet His 'Worst Experience,' Reveals Why It Was 'Traumatic'

Bombay Velvet, starring Ranbir Kapoor, Anushka Sharma, and Karan Johar was intended to be a lavish, retro-noir tribute to Bombay in the 1960s, drawing inspiration from Gyan Prakash's Mumbai Fables. Despite its large budget and stellar cast, the movie received negative reviews for its narrative and ended up being one of Bollywood's biggest commercial busts. The stress of the project and its final result had a lasting effect on Anurag Kashyap, who called the post-production stage of the movie 'the worst experience' of his life.

Anurag Kashyap disclosed that the aftermath of the release of Bombay Velvet was extremely disturbing during a recent conversation with Komal Nahta on his podcast. "If I could have owned this failure, this film wouldn’t have been a trauma for me. It became a trauma for me," he said. Calling it the lowest point of his career, he shared "Yes, in the post-production stage, not the shooting. I went on the back foot. This was the first time I saw so much negativity in my life."

Anurag Kashyap revealed that the film's failure made him reevaluate how he approaches making movies. Following Bombay Velvet, which was produced on a Rs 90 crore budget and brought in Rs 43.20 crore globally, Kashyap made the decision to dramatically cut back.

Anurag Kashyap added, "I understood my audience, and then I started working backwards. I asked the production house, 'how much money will you give me if I don’t tell you what is the script, and I don’t tell you who I will cast in the film, but you feel that I will recover the money.' This was 2016 post-Bombay Velvet. They gave me Rs 3.5 crore. After Rs 90 crore I went straight to Rs 3.5 crore because I didn’t want to get trapped."

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About Bombay Velvet

Bombay Velvet only made roughly Rs 23 crore in its first week at the box office, despite its ambitious scope and Rs 120 crore production budget. The movie was eventually deemed a commercial flop after receiving conflicting reviews from critics.

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Bombay Velvet is a Hindi-language neo-noir period crime drama that was co-produced and directed by Anurag Kashyap. It was released on May 15, 2015. Karan Johar makes a comeback as an actor in the movie. Siddhartha Basu, Vivaan Shah, Manish Choudhary, and Kay Kay Menon all play important roles in the cast.