With all due respect to Sairat, I will always stand by my film Dhadak: Shashank Khaitan

By Vandana Srivastawa

on July 26, 2018

Janhvi Kapoor and Ishaan Khatter’s film Dhadak directed by Shashank Khaitan and produced under Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions is doing great at the box office and is slowly inching closer to the Rs 50 crore mark, making it one of the best box office collections ever by newcomers as lead. Today, the team of Dhadak celebrated their success with the members of the media.

Shashank, who had given two box office hits previously in the form of Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania and Badrinath Ki Dulhania, had a daunting task at hand to remake the Marathi hit Sairat into an equally appealing film in form of Dhadak. During the success bash, Shashank spoke to the media and shared, “I have read every good and bad review out there and I’m happy with all the love and hate. But with due respect to Sairat, I will always stand by my film.” Dhadak received a lot of mixed reviews especially when it was compared to the original film directed by Nagraj Manjule.

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However, matching up to Sairat would have been a difficult task as it has achieved cult status in Marathi cinema, but we can’t ignore the fact that Dhadak is an equally engaging film if taken on its own merit. Talking about his lead actors’ (Janhvi and Ishaan) reaction to the reviews, Shashank said, “These kids were hiding by the interval of the premiere show; they were not ready to face the reactions.”

Dhadak was criticized for showcasing the class angle whereas Sairat was more about the caste difference. However, Shashank maintains that he kept the film as true to the plot as can be especially because there are so many things a Hindi film gets targeted about. He said that he chose to bring out the caste difference in a subtle way in Dhadak. “Taking the feedback constructively, we (Shashank and team) will research more on such subjects like honor killing, casteism in future. But we did the best to our ability," shared the director, riding high on the success of his latest outing.