New Delhi: Actor Sohum Shah says he thought studios would line up to back “Crazxy” after the success of 2018’s “Tumbbad” and when that didn’t happen he decided to produce his next release.
Helmed by first-time director Girish Kohli, the upcoming thriller revolves around Dr Abhimanyu Sood (Shah), who races against time to rescue his kidnapped daughter.
Shah said Kohli, best known for thrillers such as “Mom” and “HIT: The First Case”, reached out to him for the movie back in 2017 after watching “Tumbbad” which he really liked. But it took them eight years to get the film up for a release.
“He didn’t come to me asking to produce the film. He liked my work in ‘Tumbbad’. I really liked the script of ‘Crazxy’ which came to me in 2019 and thought I will be able to pull it off but I will also produce it.
“We thought studios would come to us after the success of ‘Tumbbad’ but they did not give us any money. Things got even more delayed because of Covid. Finally, I did some ‘jugaad’ and we started working on the film in 2022. The circle of ‘Crazxy’ is finally complete after eight years,” the actor-producer told PTI in an interview.
For “Crazxy”, set to hit the screens on February 28, the makers recreated two songs “Goli Maar Bheje Mein” from 1998’s “Satya” and “Abhimanyu Chakravyuh Mein Phans Gaya Hai Tu” from “Inquilaab” (1984).
Shah, who has also produced the movie in collaboration with Adesh Prasad and Ankit Jain, said they bought the rights to these hit tracks as they fit into the film’s narrative.
“I believe you can easily communicate whatever you want to say through music. You will understand the role of these two songs when you watch the film… Our character whose name is Abhimanyu has made many mistakes and that’s why he is stuck in a ‘chakravyuh’. That song suits him a lot. Similarly, there’s ‘Goli Maar Bheje Mein’…”
Recently, the re-release box office numbers of “Sanam Teri Kasam” overtook the collections of “Tumbbad” re-release, and the actor-producer congratulated the makers of the 2016 romantic drama on the feat.
In its second outing in theatres, “Sanam Teri Kasam” has earned Rs 37.18 crore net, surpassing the figures of “Tumbbad” (Rs 32 crore net) when it re-released last October, as per reports.
“I’d like to congratulate the team of ‘Sanam Teri Kasam’ that they got such great numbers from the re-release of the film. That they made more than the ‘Tumbbad’ re-release… I always felt that ‘Tumbbad’ deserved better, that it should have reached viewers…
“I feel just like us, even they felt that something was missing. When a film receives a lot of praise on re-release, you feel assured that it was good but it just wasn’t able to reach out to the right audience when it originally released,” he added.
According to Shah, not all films have been able to do well at the box office when re-released.
“Those films that are underrated, which were unable to reach the audiences due to whatever reason, maybe it was a bigger film that it clashed with… Re-release for those films is a golden opportunity to prove that their content matters. There is also a revenue model to it.
“From what I have understood, only those films have worked upon re-release which had good content and at that time maybe due to a new star cast, director or producer it didn’t reach the public. Whereas, superhit films with big stars haven’t done that well when they were re-released. Nothing better than an artist getting their due.”
He also gave an update on the sequel of “Tumbbad”, which he announced last year.
“We started working on a sequel in 2018 but nothing materialised. Finally we have locked the script and ideally we hope to start work on ‘Tumbbad 2’ by year end or early next year,” Shah said.
