MUMBAI: Filmmaker Ektaa R Kapoor is a household name in India, having successfully ruled the entertainment space for the last three decades. Recently, at the Waves event, she shared an intriguing anecdote about her blockbuster film starring Vidya Balan, The Dirty Picture.
The content mogul revealed that on paper, the film was exceeding its budget by ₹10–12 crores, but they still decided to take the risk with effective cost-cutting measures. The rest, as they say, is history. The Dirty Picture went on to collect ₹112 crores at the box office and earned Vidya Balan a National Award.
Speaking about the initial challenges of making the film, Ektaa said,
"A film of mine called The Dirty Picture. It was about this woman who decided to take on a full male-dominated film industry. It was a real story, and we couldn't buy the rights. So we said there were many women like this and we'll make this new character. On paper, it was a 10 to 12 crore loss, a couple of million at that time. And I still remember we did our job of first reducing the cost to working around it to see that we supported with 3, 4 typically large scale films. And yet, without putting our investors in danger, make this content because you see at the cost of content I don't want to downsize a company and make people lose their jobs."
Adding to this, she said, "You see, art and economics have to go hand in hand. We made the film because we said we would take it on ourselves to compensate the company with better work, more work, more commercial work so that the economics are not affected. But in fact, that one film became our biggest ROI even till today. It resonated; it gave us a whole new identity and brought us back. So, was that risk worth it? Yes."
This isn’t the first time Ektaa has taken bold, creative risks. She has consistently backed women-led films that have earned both critical and commercial acclaim, be it Lootera, Lipstick Under My Burkha, Veere Di Wedding, The Buckingham Murders, or Crew.
Even during her television era, Ektaa made women the heroes of her stories, taking the TRPs of her shows to a record high of 20, an achievement still unmatched in today’s age of reality TV dominance.
Her illustrious career has been a rollercoaster with many peaks. Ektaa remains one of the longest-standing and shrewdest producers in the industry, successfully steering her entertainment conglomerate, Balaji, through decades of evolution.
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