“Badhaai Ho” director Amit Sharma reveals that the film was supposed to be an advertisement!
Ayushmann Khurana starrer “Badhaai Ho” was undoubtedly one of the best Bollywood movies of 2018. It was unconventional, witty and downright hilarious. It was a box office hit as well, pleasing the critics and the audiences alike. Filmmaker and director of “Badhaai Ho”, Amit Sharma is still basking in the glory of his 2018 box office success. During a panel discussion of FICCI Frames 2019, Amita Sharma revealed that Badhaai Ho was not supposed to be a movie, but was originally an idea for an advertisement. He spoke about how the idea never really reached the client that it was originally written for.
He said, “I heard this one-line idea in 2015 which said ’51-year-old mother getting pregnant.’ I just jumped on this idea written for an ad film and said, ‘Wow let’s develop this into a feature film’. Akshat (Ghildial), my writer, wrote that but fortunately, the script never got presented to the client. It never reached the client.” The panel was titled, ‘Badhaai Ho! Industry: The ‘not-so-big’ films can also be big films’.
Amit Sharma also disclosed that he was told not to take a risk with this story. But he believed in the script, and thought that if the idea affected him in some way, it would affect the audiences as well. He said in the panel, “Because my background is advertising filmmaking, I always jump on good ideas. When you get to do a feature film with an idea, it is always going to work. I had immense confidence in this idea. We were walking on thin ice because we were talking about the pregnancy of a 51-year old mother. It could have gone either way. A lot of people told me your first film Tevar didn’t work, so why are you taking a risk. But I didn’t think it was a risk because if an idea has affected me, it will affect others too. The same people who asked me why I was making this film, called me after the release and said they were glad I did.”
The FICCI Frames 2019 panel was moderated by Fox Star India’s Vijay Singh. Amit Sharma shared the panel with Stree director Amar Kaushik and Vivek Krishnani of Sony Pictures Entertainment, the filmmaker duo Raj and DK, and film producers Priti Sahani and Ajit Andhare.
