Are Ranbir and Deepika really returning their Tamasha salaries?

Reports of actors and directors like Ranbir Kapoor, Deepika Padukone and Anurag Kashyap returning money if a film fails at the box office are swirling — myth or reality?

A few days back, there were media reports that actors Deepika Padukone and Ranbir Kapoor are compensating for the losses the distributors had made because of their film Tamasha ending up as a flop at the box office, by returning `15 crore from their fee.

Ranbir Kapoor and Deepika Padukone starred opposite each other in Imtiaz Ali’s Tamasha.

A Mumbai daily also ran a report about how Anurag Kashyap intends to return the entire production cost of Bombay Velvet to its production house and the distributors. However, the people in question were quick to rubbish these reports. Anurag took to Twitter to call the report “totally baseless and factually wrong”. Deepika’s spokesperson also denied it.

Trade analyst Amod Mehra believes that this act of giving is all farce. “Sab bakwas hai. Koi kisi ko paisey wapas nahi deta. Such reports are for publicity. No one is ready to return their hard-earned money to anyone,” says Mehra.

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Filmmaker Abbas Ali says he wouldn’t return the fee, “Small directors don’t even get that much remuneration. When a movie crosses the 100-crore mark, the producers don’t pay anything extra to the actors or the directors, why should we return if a film doesn’t do well?” questions Ali.

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However, filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt says this trend has always existed in the past. “Actors Raj Kumar and Dev Anand used to return money to the producers when their films failed at the box office. I have done this numerous times. When my film Mr. X failed to perform at the box office, I took responsibility and returned the money,” he says.

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