Abhishek Sharma: We were told ‘Tere Bin Laden’ shouldn’t see light of day

Mumbai, July 15 

Abhishek Sharma’s satirical venture “Tere Bin Laden” will complete 10 years on July 16, and the filmmaker has narrated his ordeal of getting a studio, and how producer Boney Kapoor saved the day for him.

Headlined by Ali Zafar, Piyush Mishra and Pradhuman Singh, who played a character modelled on Osama Bin Laden, the film was a good mix of slapstick and smart humour.

But to sell a film like that in 2010 wasn’t an easy for Sharma, who went through a fair share of trials to ensure the film was released.

“After a smooth production, we hit a wall. Nobody wanted to distribute our film. My producers Pooja (Shetty Deora) and Aarti (Shetty) showed the film to some of the leading studios and distributors of that time but nobody had faith in it. One of the distributors even said that this film should never see the light of day as it will bring a bad reputation to the producers. We were shattered by this response but didn’t give up,” said Sharma.

“After all, for the three of us, it was our first film and we completely believed in it. Maybe the narrative was ahead of its time and it didn’t fit in the category of a conventional Bollywood film. The struggle continued with no success, and then one fine day Mr. Boney Kapoor saw the film. He loved it and offered to distribute the film himself. His conviction and passion for ‘Tere Bin Laden’ were infectious and the momentum shifted. We were all very confident now that the film will be liked by the Bollywood audience. The film released with very low numbers but with great word of mouth doubled its collection on Saturday. And most shows were houseful on Sunday. It was a sleeper hit of the year and a lot of distributors apologised to my producers for being wrong about the film,” he added.

Sharma’s next film “Suraj Pe Mangal Bhari” stars Manoj Bajpayee and Diljit Dosanjh along with Fatima Sana Shaikh.