Anupam Kher admits Saiyaara ‘wiped out’ Tanvi The Great, calls film's failure heartbreaking: ‘It depressed me’
Anupam Kher revealed how financers backed out of Tanvi The Great a month before the film and recalled taking money from his friends.
After a break of three years, filmmaker Mohit Suri returned to direction with Saiyaara, creating a stir at the box office. The film turned debutant Ahaan Panday and actor Aneet Padda into overnight sensations. However, the release of Saiyaara coincided with Anupam Kher’s Tanvi The Great, which suffered at the box office. In a recent interview with Screen, Anupam revealed that he was depressed after his film was wiped out of theatres due to the Saiyaara fever.
Anupam Kher reveals being depressed after Tanvi The Great was wiped out by Saiyaara
Anupam admitted that due to the success of Saiyaara, his film, Tanvi The Great, was wiped out of theatres. He said, “I worked for four years on this film — one year of writing, one year of music. I wrote and directed the film. We released the film on the same day as Yash Raj Films’ Saiyaara, and it got completely wiped out. It depressed me. It made me feel very sad, not just for myself, but for the new actor whom I took from my acting school, and for the almost 200 people who worked on the film.”
Anupam recalled that the film had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival and was also screened in New York, where Robert De Niro watched it until the interval and expressed that he thought it was good. He added,
“The financer of the film ran away a month before its release. It’s a costly film, so I called my friends who are doctors, lawyers, etc. They gave me the money. Everything was going fine, but the world wanted to see a love story — and rightfully so. A young, teenage love story had not come for a long time, and the system here is that even if you release the film in 400 theatres, if another film is doing very well, they will remove your film. So it was a failure which was very heartbreaking for me.”
About Tanvi The Great and Saiyaara
{{/usCountry}}“The financer of the film ran away a month before its release. It’s a costly film, so I called my friends who are doctors, lawyers, etc. They gave me the money. Everything was going fine, but the world wanted to see a love story — and rightfully so. A young, teenage love story had not come for a long time, and the system here is that even if you release the film in 400 theatres, if another film is doing very well, they will remove your film. So it was a failure which was very heartbreaking for me.”
About Tanvi The Great and Saiyaara
{{/usCountry}}Helmed by Anupam Kher, Tanvi The Great featured Anupam, Arvind Swami, Iain Glen, Boman Irani, Jackie Shroff, and Pallavi Joshi in key roles. It tells the story of a young autistic woman, Tanvi Raina (played by debutant Shubhangi Dutt), who is determined to fulfil her late father’s dream of hoisting the Indian flag at Siachen. The film managed to collect only ₹2.54 crore worldwide at the box office.
{{/usCountry}}Helmed by Anupam Kher, Tanvi The Great featured Anupam, Arvind Swami, Iain Glen, Boman Irani, Jackie Shroff, and Pallavi Joshi in key roles. It tells the story of a young autistic woman, Tanvi Raina (played by debutant Shubhangi Dutt), who is determined to fulfil her late father’s dream of hoisting the Indian flag at Siachen. The film managed to collect only ₹2.54 crore worldwide at the box office.
{{/usCountry}}On the other hand, Mohit Suri’s Saiyaara is a musical romantic drama. It tells the love story between Vaani Batra (Aneet Padda), an aspiring journalist and poet, and Krish Kapoor (Ahaan Panday), a struggling musician. Their romance faces a heart‑wrenching challenge that forces them to part ways. How they eventually find their way back to each other forms the rest of the tale.
The film resonated deeply with audiences and emerged as the biggest romantic drama in Indian cinema, surpassing Chennai Express and Kabir Singh. Saiyaara earned ₹569.75 crore worldwide at the box office, emerging as one of the highest‑grossing films of 2025.
