Aamir Khan reveals Lagaan's first cut was over seven hours, didn't give pre-sale rights to distributors: ‘They were upset with the length, would've incurred 25% loss daily'

Indian Express

18 hours ago

Aamir Khan's Lagaan remains a landmark film in the history of Hindi cinema. Besides being India's official entry to the 2002 Oscars, Ashutosh Gowariker's sports-musical drama was a commercial and critical success. Aamir, who turned producer with Lagaan, recently revealed that the film's first cut was seven and a half hours long. The actor also revealed that distributors were upset with him, both for initially withholding the film's rights and for its lengthy runtime.
During a conversation with Mashable India, Aamir revealed that Gowariker's first cut of the movie was over seven hours. He said, 'The first cut that Ashu showed us was of seven and a half hours. We shot that much. In that, four and a half hours was the lead up to the cricket match.'
The actor added, 'After cricket started, it was of 3 days – Day 1, Day 2, Day 3. He had kept an hour for each day, which added another 3 hours. Hence, the first cut had a seven and a half hour duration. We removed several sequences and some sequences were very long, we cut them short. We came down to 3 hours, 42 minutes. We had to cut around half of the film.'
The distributors were initially upset with the actor-filmmaker because he didn't sell Lagaan's rights. 'We weren't happy. I felt that even a three hour film was enough, but we couldn't tell the story in that duration. So, the distributors were very upset, because I didn't sell the rights of the film. It was my first film as a producer, I wanted to see for myself first, if everything was good or not. I didn't want to pre-sale in advance, it would have been irresponsible. I focused on making the film first. I knew that it's a risky film, subject is cricket, the distributor doesn't even know,' he reasoned.
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Aamir Khan called the distributors to sell the movie after it was ready, but the length of the film was leading to losses. 'I was telling them that this is an almost 4-hour film. There were no multiplexes and single screen had 4 shows – at 12, 3, 6, and 9. They said that your film is so long that we have to remove one show, so there will be 3 shows in a day instead of 4. They said that it will bear them a loss of 25% daily, because of the length of my film.'
However, the 60-year-old actor came up with a solution of only taking a minimum guarantee amount from them. 'So, I told them to give me a price that suits them, a minimum guarantee (MG) for your territory. I will take the entire risk, you will be safe. I showed them the film,' he said.
Aamir Khan made every distributor in India watch Lagaan and asked for suggestions from them. 'People never made distributors watch their film because of the fear that they might not buy their movie. We did a meeting with them after showing it, and asked to give me suggestions of what to remove from the film. I gave a pen and paper to all India distributors, to write and tell me what to cut,' he shared.
Aamir continued, 'One asked me to remove the bhajan 'O paalan haare'. Another cut him off saying, 'Its an important scene for the emotion.' The meeting went on for 10 minutes. I didn't have to say anything, they kept cutting each other's thoughts. They all then said together that don't remove anything, the film is really good as is, we will remove one show only.'
On the work front, Aamir Khan is gearing up for his next film Sitaare Zameen Par's release. Directed by R.S Prassanna, it is set to hit theatres on June 20.