One of the biggest and the most expensive Bollywood flop of all time, ‘Bombay Velvet’ was turned down by Saif Ali Khan, Kareena Kapoor and Hrithik Roshan before it was made with Ranbir Kapoor and Anushka Sharma.
Made on a massive budget of INR120 crore, Anurag Kashyap’s gangster flick ‘Bombay Velvet’ starred A-list actors Ranbir Kapoor, Anushka Sharma and filmmaker Karan Johar in leads, along with Kay Kay Menon, Vivaan Shah, Manish Chaudhary and Siddhartha Basu in supporting roles.
The title opened to mixed reviews from critics and dull occupancy in the movie halls, making many of the theatres remove it by the second day.
As per the numbers quoted by Indian trade pandits, the film incurred a loss of more than INR100 crores.
That being said, do you know? Kapoor was never the first choice of Kashyap to play Johnny Balraj in the film and the role was first offered to his brother-in-law, Saif Ali Khan in 2006, who turned it down without ‘even reading’ the script, due to Kashyap, who was not considered an ideal director for commercial cinema at that time. After Saif, the project went to Aamir Khan and then to Hrithik Roshan, who reportedly held the script for two years but never responded.
Reportedly, the film was also offered to Kareena Kapoor who only ‘considered’ reading but never got on board.
Kashyap once revealed that ‘Bombay Velvet’ was once with Ranveer Singh as well, but he could only raise only INR 40-50 crores from the producers, while the title demanded a budget of INR300 crore.