Akshay Kumar admits he’s disappointed about Bachchhan Paandey’s box office: ‘Would have liked it to do better’

Akshay Kumar has opened up about the underwhelming box office returns for his action comedy Bachchhan Paandey, due to the unprecedented success of the comparatively lower-budgeted Vivek Agnihotri film The Kashmir Files. Bachchhan Paandey, directed Farhad Samji, failed to cross the Rs 50 crore mark in its first week, which is a rarity for most films with Akshay in lead.

He told Hindustan Times that he is ‘elated’ about The Kashmir Files’ success and said it has upended the notion that only those films with big budgets and of a certain type are guaranteed successes. “Yes, I would have liked Bachchhan Paandey to better than what it is doing but not once do I blame the Kashmir files for it. That film is a storm and we came in the eye of it,” he added.

He was also asked HT about accusations that he only does remakes of South Indian movies. He responded saying that that’s not “entirely true” and he also does original scripts. He named upcoming films such as Prithviraj, Raksha Bandhan, Ram Setu, OMG2, and Gorkha to illustrate his point. “Yes there are also some remakes,” he admitted, adding “but that’s because these are films I’ve watched and loved and I’m excited to bring to our audience as I feel the market for the same hasn’t been tapped. And it’s not a one-way deal, even South Indian films borrow scripts from our industry. In recent times, my own films like Special 26, Oh My God! etc. have been remade in the south.”

Apart from The Kashmir Files, Bachchhan Paandey’s tepid box office performance may also have to do with mixed to negative reviews. The Indian Express film critic Shubhra Gupta gave the film only 1 star. She wrote, “The kindest thing I can say about this Hindi remake of Karthick Subbaraj’s ‘Jigarthanda’, in which a wet-behind-the-ears director sets about making a film about a notorious gangster, is that it shouldn’t have been attempted at all.”