SANTOSHI AND HIS PROBLEMS

Raj Kumar Santoshi has been planning multiple projects but not many have been taking off. Unlike some meticulous filmmakers like Karan Johar and Aditya Chopra, Raj Kumar Santoshi, a concrete example of someone who is a master of bad planning,...

By N. Anandhi (Contributor)

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Published: Fri 3 Jun 2005, 2:03 PM

Last updated: Thu 2 Apr 2015, 6:20 PM

disastrous pre-production abilities and a king of reshooting, has had many projects at stake.

For starters, films like Autograph (Abhishek Bachchan-Priyanka Chopra-Lara Dutta), Prithviraj Samyukta (Ajay Devgan-Aishwarya Rai) Saamna, (Ajay Devgan, Nana Patekar and Aishwarya Rai) and Ranveer (Amitabh and Abhishek Bachchan) don’t seem like they will ever take off. Ranveer now is said to be made with Ajay Devgan and Aishwarya Rai for producer Bobby Duggal, which means another project has gone down the drain.

Another film for Balaji Telefilms starring Tusshar Kapoor was also slated to start, but there are huge hurdles on that front too.

So what is wrong with Santoshi’s planning? No one can dispute that when the man completes a film, not many can complain, because it is one of the best products. But then something seems to be wrong somewhere in the planning of other movies. Also the budgets tend to get so high that people do not manage to recover their money.

Till date no Raj Kumar Santoshi film has been able to gross more than Rupees 200 million, but the budgets of all his films today are over Rupees 300 million. This brings us to another question. Is he a viable director? We think he needs a good executive producer.

Guess he needs the best man in the business to do the job and control him. Sanjay Routray, the man who had Makdee and Matrubhoomi made at cheap budgets seems to be an alternative if Santoshi does not know one. And Santoshi should concentrate on one film at a time.


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