Never expected families to turn up for Vicky Donor: Director

Shoojit Sircar's Vicky Donor has struck gold with critics as well as the box office but the director says he never expected the film would be lauded so much, especially by the general audience.

Shoojit Sircar's Vicky Donor has struck gold with critics as well as the box office but the director says he never expected the film would be lauded so much, especially by the general audience.

Vicky Donor was Shoojit's first release six years after Yahaan came and the filmmaker says before its release he was quite sure only college goers would turn up for a film on sperm donation.

"I never imagined that families would turn up to watch Vicky Donor. When a person hasn't had a release for six years, he cannot imagine such a success. I was very pessimistic about it. It's a quirky film, not a mainstream one. But now youngsters are asking their parents to go and watch the film," Shoojit told PTI.

Made on a budget of about five crores, the April 20 release starring veteran actor Annu Kapoor and newcomers Ayushmann Khurana and Yami Gautam, has reportedly earned 22 crores at the box office so far.

And the director puts the success down to the unusual subject and the honesty of the story.

"Unusual subjects attract, but cannot sustain the film. To my knowledge, what worked was the story and the honesty of the characters. Nowhere did we try to make it dramatic. The cultural clash and the progressive characters worked."

The film, set in Delhi, shows an unemployed young Punjabi who turns into a sperm donor and falls in love with a Bengali divorcee.

"The responses have been phenomenal from all over India as well as abroad. The issue which was a taboo and discussed behind closed doors so far, has now come out in the open. People will now talk about sperm donors and infertility normally," said Shoojit.