According to Kangana Ranaut, allegations that her most recent movie, Dhaakad, bombed at the box office were spurred on by an intentional campaign against her. She gave the example of other recent box office duds and questioned why they were getting more attention.
In response to remarks made by Dhaakad producer Deepak Mukut in an interview with the Media, Kangana shared her thoughts on Instagram Stories. The producer had refuted rumors that he had to sell off land to pay back investors. The office of my producer, @deepakmukut, is not sold. Even though he claimed to have reimbursed all of his expenses, the bad press keeps coming in. To attack, himmat toh rakho saamne se aane ki”… Chillar mafia,” wrote Kangana.
Sharing screenshots of some story-calling videos from a niche website like Radhe Shyam, Gangubai Kathiawadi, JugJugg Jeeyo and 83 as box office flops, she summated, “Everyday I wake up to hundreds of articles of Dhaakad being a flop… and no one is talking about these big disasters… any specific reason?”
Dhaakad, which is an action film directed by debutant Razneesh Ghai, is a film of budget 85 crores and have made less than Rs. 4 so far till now. The cast of this film includes Arjun Rampal and Divya Dutta. JugJugg Jeeyo, in contrast, has collected more than Rs 70 crores in less than time span of two weeks of its release, while Gangubai Kathiawadi did a business of approximately Rs 120 crore in the domestic box office race.
In an interview with the Media, Deepak Mukut asserted that the movie had allowed him to recoup his expenses. “Dhaakad was a very well-crafted movie that we did with a lot of commitment. I’m not sure what went wrong, but I’d like to think that it was the viewers’ decision as to what they wanted to watch and what they accepted in reality. But in our opinion, we are proud to have created a strong, female-led spy action thriller, a genre that is less developed,” he had remarked.
He also refuted claims that Dhaakad was having trouble finding streaming partners after performing poorly at the box office. He claimed to have received multiple proposals, but in the end the movie was sold to ZEE5.