Getting box-office numbers is a pressure: Remo D’Souza
After helming four films, Remo D’souza got his moment in the sun when he managed to get Salman Khan on board for Race 3. For him it was almost surreal to direct the superstar as Remo is a self-confessed Salman Khan fan. Talking about it, he says, “I am a huge Salman fan, and I have always wanted to portray him in a certain manner. So, when I got the opportunity, I made sure that I gave the Salman Khan fans what they wanted. He is the biggest superstar we have right now so whenever he makes his entry on screen, people should whistle and hoot for him. In this film, I made him fly, ride a bike, drive the fastest car in the world, and all this with a good dose of hand to hand combat sequences.”
While Remo says that Salman was a delight to work with, he does admit that he was pleasantly surprised by the actor’s dedication to the craft. “My biggest challenge in this film was to direct Salman and I wanted to make sure that everything was a notch higher. I was taken by surprise when we started shooting because people had told me that Salman has a habit of not coming on time and that he was difficult to deal with. Everything that was told to me was wrong and I was pleasantly surprised that he was on time, he listened to me, and he trusted me and made my job so easy”, he says.
Having a superstar in your film, increases expectations from the box office. While Salman does have a fairly successful track record as far as Eid releases are concerned, Remo says that he definitely feels the pressure. “With every film, every director has some amount of pressure. It’s like an exam and now you’re waiting for the results. No matter how vehemently I deny that there is no box-office pressure, of course the numbers matter. That is something that bothers everyone from the producer to the actor. Everyone wants their film to make money. It is a little stressful because now we only talk about box-office numbers and not if the film was actually good or bad. There is pressure to get the numbers.”