Aanand L Rai takes responsibility for Shah Rukh Khan’s Zero box office failure: ‘I never understood…’

In a new interview, Aanand L Rai shared that working with Shah Rukh Khan on Zero was a ‘rewarding experience’, but somewhere he lost 'that thing'.

It has been nearly seven years since superstar Shah Rukh Khan’s ambitious film Zero released and underperformed at the box office in 2018. However, the film still weighs on director Aanand L Rai. The filmmaker has no qualms to take the blame for the film’s box office failure, saying he did not effectively weave Shah Rukh Khan’s stardom into the character.

In Zero, Shah Rukh Khan played the role of a man with dwarfism,

Aanand L Rai looks back

Aanand spoke about his 2018 film, starring Anushka Sharma and Katrina Kaif with Shah Rukh, during an interview with Galatta Plus. The filmmaker admitted that he made the mistake of not incorporating Shah Rukh Khan’s stardom into the character he played in Zero.

“The problem with Zero was that, that man..that superstar came to me with so much of love and me being me, I never understood that it’s not an actor director who was going to make a story. There was a superstar attached, his image is there, which I have to understand and get in the film. I was working with an actor, a big actor. I realised much later that there is an image that I had to take care of,” he said.

Aanand added, “When you say that my films are without the baggage of a star, somewhere I agree that maybe I am unable to incorporate that stardom in my characters. At times, people want to see their stars in a character, but a part of the star should also be there, which I was unable to do. I was floating, those bearings were not there, they were moved.”

That being said, Aanand shared that working with Shah Rukh Khan was a “rewarding experience”, adding “one of us should have stopped and said, ‘Hello, it’s not just actor director, there is a star’. He never brought it in front of me, I never understood that and somewhere I lost that thing”.

What do we know about Zero

Shah Rukh Khan’s 2018 movie, Zero, wherein he played the role of a man with dwarfism, failed to impress the audience. After the box office failure of the film, Shah Rukh took a break from acting

The romantic drama, directed by Aanand L. Rai, also featured Anushka Sharma, and Katrina Kaif. It followed the life of Bauua Singh, a man with dwarfism from Meerut, who embarks on a journey of self-discovery and love. He finds himself caught between a brilliant scientist with cerebral palsy (played by Anushka) and a troubled superstar (played by Katrina). The film was made on a budget of ₹200 crore, and managed to collect only ₹178 crore worldwide, ending up as a box office disaster.

On the work front, Aanand L. Rai directed Tere Ishk Mein, starring Kriti Sanon and Dhanush.