Hansal Mehta on The Buckingham Murders BO reception: People write obituaries for a film… FilmyMeet

Filmmaker Hansal Mehta isn’t happy about the box office-centric conversation around his recently-released thriller, The Buckingham Murders, starring Kareena Kapoor Khan in the lead role. “My time and effort is ultimately nobody’s business. Also, it’s the producers who’ve invested the money in the project, and yet people talk about it as if it’s their money,” says the 56-year-old, adding, “The problem lies in the fact that people don’t see the film for what it does to them, or for its story and characters. They are so interested in the numbers that it has become reductive.”

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Mehta emphasises that box-office collections are only a part and “don’t necessarily communicate the entire picture”. “When we launched the trailer of our film, Ekta (Kapoor, co-producer) had mentioned how numbers and profits are two different things. The film has been profitable from day one,” the filmmaker shares, adding, “We have to give the audiences some time, for word of mouth to spread. But people write obituaries for a film over a weekend.”

The source of the box office collections, he clarifies, is not right. “Whatever numbers were quoted, they were wrong. Two versions of the film were released in Hinglish and Hindi. However, only numbers of one version were reported,” he ends.