Producer Ashi Dua on ‘KaalaKaandi’: We missed the initial release because of the cuts

Producer Ashi Dua finally can breathe easy as her next ‘Kaalakaandi’ starring Saif Ali Khan is up for the release. After various trouble, as the film was given 73 cuts by the CBFC and Anushka Sharma was to produce the film, but she dropped it. And also after missing its date with the box office in September, the film will hit the theatres this Friday.


Ashi Dua said, "We missed the initial release because of the cuts so we approached the Film Certification Appellate Tribunal. They understood why we had used the language and passed it with two cuts and an 'A' certificate. We shot in the city during monsoons because we needed rain. It's the story of its urban upper class, the ones who come here from other places, and the underbelly. All these lives are intertwined without us even realising it. That's what the film is about."


Ashi talks about how she managed when Anushka decided to drop, and how she meet Verma "I was looking for writers to develop scripts and had heard a lot about him. When I told him that I'd like him to develop something, he said that he'd written a film that Anushka was already producing. A few months on, we met and the conversation kept going back to ‘Kaalakaandi’. He suggested that I start putting it together. Saif was his first choice and he immediately came on board. I spoke to Anushka and her brother (co-producer) Karnesh and they told me to go ahead with the film as they hadn't started work on it then.”


Ashi is also working on ‘Love and Lust’, an anthology that reunites her four directors from ‘Bombay Talkies’, "Zoya Akhtar, Anurag Kashyap, Karan Johar and Dibakar Banerjee are returning but it's a completely different film and Ronnie Screwvala is the co-producer on it. The idea was to replicate the format of a film like New York, I Love You, where different directors offer their take on a common theme.”