Overview
- In new interviews and on the Game Changers podcast, Anurag Kashyap says studio involvement pushed Bombay Velvet’s budget from roughly Rs 28 crore to about Rs 90 crore.
- Kashyap says he initially cast Ranveer Singh but shifted to Ranbir Kapoor after prominent filmmakers urged him to choose a bigger star.
- He describes visible scale-ups to justify the spend, including erecting sets, housing the team at a resort in Sri Lanka, and switching from rickshaws to Mercedes for transport.
- Kashyap says he delayed the project by around a year and a half and made the smaller film Ugly during that period to process the changes.
- He recalls being pressed to shorten the nearly three-hour cut by roughly 25 minutes over concerns about show counts and first-weekend collections.