Bombay Velvet turns 10: Anurag Kashyap says Pahlaj Nihalani cut all kissing, intimate scenes between Ranbir Kapoor-Anushka Sharma, producer pushed for a tamer version to recoup crores

Indian Express

15-05-2025

'A celebrated disaster' is what Ranbir Kapoor called his 2015 film Bombay Velvet. Made on a budget of Rs 115 crore and recovering less than half of its cost, the film's box office journey went down in history as a sour lesson to producers and filmmakers. But what resulted in the film's failure? After all, the film had the perfect cast — Anushka Sharma and Ranbir Kapoor, with Karan Johar marking his acting debut in the role of a villain. It was Anurag Kashyap's leap into the league of big-budget films and it had the backing of his trusted friends and producers Vikas Bahl and Vikramaditya Motwane. Bombay Velvet completes 10 years of its release today.
While the film became a case study on what not to do with a big-budget film, Anurag Kashyap blamed the film's mediocrity on the hefty budget and the pressure it brought to recover cost. In an earlier interaction, Anurag shared that the film presented to the audience wasn't his version, but a perforated one after the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) cut various intimate scenes between the lead characters of Anushka and Ranbir.
Speaking about the same in an earlier interview, Anurag said, 'Bombay Velvet is my most censored film. Pahlaj Nihalani (Former chairperson of the Central Board of Film Certification) deliberately sat down and cut down all intimacy between my two characters, throughout the film. My characters were two people who could not keep their hands off each other, that's how I wanted to create their love and they are consistently kissing and talking. He snipped out all intimacy from the film. I was so angry. I abused him. I recorded my own voice and put in the film. It is there still.'
Kashyap was all gung-ho about Sandeep Reddy Vanga after Animal, which also starred Ranbir in the lead role, released in theatres. This led to confusion among Kashyap's fans as he was seen supporting a misogynistic film. However, in his interaction with Zoom, Anurag shared that he admired Vanga for standing his ground and releasing a more than three-hour-long film and not letting producers or any other external entity hamper his vision of the film.
He said, 'Sandeep has changed so many theories in the film industry. He made a 3 hour 35 minute film. I have gone through that, I was told cut Bombay Velvet to 2 hours and 50 minutes and they told me that nobody would watch a 3 hour film. A lot of things in the film got censored because it needed to get 'U' certificate because its budget was very high. I had no support system. Everybody wanted to recover the film's cost and get a good opening. Forget about numbers, if you aren't able to appreciate your film, who else will?'
He added, 'Sandeep has proved all of these things wrong. I realised, I too should have stayed stubborn like him. I should have taken out my version of the film without listening to anyone and then success and failure both would have been mine alone.'
Later, in an interaction with India Today, producer Vikas Bahl admitted to pressurising Anurag to make a tame, sanitary version of the film, keeping in mind the recovery of the crores that went into making the film. He said, 'I feel I failed as a producer. When Anurag was doing the film I used to go and tell him 'that it is a big-budget film and we need 'U' certificate so we cannot do this or that like have a very dark character.'
He agreed that he 'handicapped' Anurag by putting the burden of recovering the money on him. 'I failed as a producer terribly because if Anurag was getting to he would have made his wildest film. I handicapped him and will never do it again,' he said.
Anurag flirted with the idea of casting various actors for the role. The casting went from Aamir Khan, Hrithik Roshan, Ranveer Singh but finally settled at Ranbir Kapoor. While Ranbir was enthusiastic to join the project and also gave his all to it, later, after the film flopped, he didn't shy away from blurting the truth and calling it a not-so-good film.
In a video shared by Brut India, Ranbir said, 'Once you start a film you lose perspective because you surrender to the process. You surrender to the filmmaking, you surrender to the character… So Bombay Velvet was something which… it deserved the fate that it had because it wasn't a good film.' The actor also called it the 'lowest phase' of his career.