Hansal Mehta: Director, not actor, owns film's failure

Hansal Mehta and Ram Madhvani

Filmmaker Hansal Mehta, who has made award-winning dramas like Shahid (2013) and Aligarh (2016), says it is his observation that when a movie fails, its ownership falls on the director, and when it's a success, the actor walks away with the accolades.'

"In my 22 years of making films, whether I like it or not, the director owns the failure and the actor owns the success," said Mehta at an event in Mumbai, which was also attended by Neerja (2016) director Ram Madhvani. Madhvani added to Mehta's point and spoke about how people end up throwing tantrums and fighting when it comes to ownership. He said, "I think that ownership is not given, it's taken."

Madhvani spoke about his struggle after his first film, saying: "I think you have to fight, scream and take it [ownership] because that's the only way they [stars] will allow you to have ownership. You have to throw tantrums as ownership is not easy. When you work with smaller budgets, it's easier to get ownership, the bigger the budgets, the more difficult it gets to have ownership. "In the last 14 to 15 years after my first short film, Let's Talk, which we funded ourselves, it took me a long time to make my next film because of the idea of ownership."

Also Read: Hansal Mehta Quits Twitter After Getting Trolled For Tweets On Vikas Behl

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