In an interview with Suruchi Sharma, Sajid Khan talks about his upcoming film Housefull which stars Akshay Kumar and three other gorgeous leading ladies. The director who last delivered the super-hit Heyy Babyy is extremely confident that his film will do Rs 60 crores of business in India in Week 1 and eventually be the first Akshay Kumar movie to cross 100 crores at the box office. Sajid also says and we quote “Akshay will be at the top of his game after Housefull, and after this movie people will start worshipping Akshay.”
Read some of the excerpts from the interview below
So, Housefull is ready for release, and it is again a comedy. Why you exploring the comic genre again?
- Heyy Babyy was not a comedy. It had more than 15 scenes of high emotional content with lots and lots of tears and drama, including the climax. I would say that Heyy Babyy was a drama which also had comedy in it. Having directed that, I decided to go in for a musical, romantic entertainer, which has comedy in it. Housefull is not just a comedy. It’s a complete entertainer. It has lots of romance, great songs and a lot of comedy too, and it has a very interesting plot.
So, can we call it a typical, masala Bollywood flick?
- I don’t really agree with this term masala Bollywood flick. Will you call 3 Idiots a masala Bollywood flick? It also had emotion, drama and comedy. Similarly my movies are also based on the same content. So I would say my film is a complete entertainer.
You have even promised Sajid Nadiadwala that the movie will do Rs 60 crore plus collection.
- I didn’t say Rs 60 crore plus business. I said Rs 60 crores in the first week only in India, and I am saying this because I know what the audience wants. I am not talking about those 2 per cent intellectuals, or a 2 per cent non-film watching audience, who like small, realistic, boring films. My audience is bigger and Housefull is an entertainer which a five-year-old child to a 75-year-old person would enjoy
- When I was writing this film, I knew that there is nothing in the world which is going to prevent me from opening up the doors of entertainment for the audience. Right from the first to the last frame, this is the film which completely entertains. I don’t like entertainment in the garb of nonsense or anything stupid or illogical.
But your kind of humour is also stupid and sometimes illogical, isn’t it?
- See, I love stupid humor, don’t get me wrong, but that is only for shows, etc. For me, the hero of the film always has to be the screenplay or the story. That is why Housefull took so long to actually start making. The real shooting took only 65 days, but to get the film started it took me more than two years, because for a year and a half we were just writing the screenplay.
The same thing happened with Heyy Babyy. We got to know that you worked on the story of Heyy Babyy almost 18-20 times.
- We had more than 35 drafts of Heyy Babyy. But its story was always a simpler one. Housefull on the other hand is an extremely complicated story.
Must be, one man, three women. And much more than that.
- There are nine other characters in the film and the strength of the film lies in the fact that Akshay Kumar is not Akshay Kumar. He is playing a character and for me the biggest victory as a director is not that I have shot the movie well, or I have narrated the story well. Fair enough, all this is separate. The biggest victory for me lies in the fact that in the very first five minutes of the film, you disconnect from the fact that you are watching Akshay Kumar and you start believing that he is a character. The credit for this also goes to Akshay, because I feel that Housefull is easily his life’s best performance.
So, you think this movie will bring Akshay back in the number game, considering 2009 didn’t go that well for him?
- Heyy Babyy did the overall business of Rs 100 crore worldwide. It was the first ever Akshay Kumar movie to touch the Rs 50 crore mark in India. In the same way this film will be the first Akshay Kumar movie in India to cross Rs 100 crore. Akshay will be at the top of his game after Housefull, and after this movie people will start worshiping Akshay.