Samrat Prithviraj director defends Akshay Kumar after its failure, ‘film wouldn’t have been made if not for him’

After reports of the Yash Raj Films camp, which had produced Akshay Kumar’s historical war drama Samrat Prithviraj, being unhappy with the actor’s “lack of commitment” towards the big budget project that spanned out to be a box office disaster, its director Chandraprakash Dwivedi has come out to defend the Bollywood star.

The film, which was reportedly made on a budget of Rs 300 crore, failed to even breach the Rs 100 crore mark in the worldwide box office. Considering that this was the second flop of the year for Aditya Chopra’s YRF after Ranveer Singh’s Jayeshbhai Jordaar, a source from the production team had told a daily that they weren’t pleased with how Akshay had approached the project and blamed him for its lack of success in the box office.

Also read: Aditya Chopra blames Akshay Kumar for Samrat Prithviraj’s failure, ‘he wouldn’t even grow a real moustache’ 

The source has said that Akshay was doing several other projects along with Samrat Prithviraj and didn’t think it was wise to solely focus on just the historical movie, which apparently required “a dedicated concentration”. “He wouldn’t even grow a real moustache as he was doing other projects,” the source said.

While this was widely discussed, the film’s director Dwivedi in an interview with ETimes defended the Bollywood star, saying that the movie wouldn’t have been made if not for Akshay Kumar. The filmmaker, who had spent years for the research of the movie on the Rajput King Prithviraj Chauhan, said in the past four years the duo has become close and that more than an actor, Akshay is now a friend and a well-wisher. “He is younger to me but he behaves like a guardian. I never blamed him for the failure of the film,” said the director.

Dwivedi also took up the responsibility for the film’s poor box office run, saying that he didn’t understand the audience and that was the prime reason the movie didn’t connect with them.