Are Ranbir, Deepika & Anurag Really Returning Money to Producers?

Are Anurag Kashyap, Ranbir Kapoor and Deepika Padukone actually compensating producers for the loss of their films?

Ranbir Kapoor and Deepika Padukone with Ranveer Singh at a screening of Tamasha (Photo courtesy: Twitter)

There have been two separate reports recently of a filmmaker and two actors having returned money to their producers after taking responsibility for the losses that their respective films accrued at the box-office.

So Anurag Kashyap along with his team at Phantom are reportedly going to pay back the entire production cost of Bombay Velvet to Fox Star Studios, while Ranbir Kapoor and Deepika Padukone have apparently returned Rs 15 crore to the makers of Tamasha.

Ranbir Kapoor and Anushka Sharma in Bombay Velvet

A report in Mumbai Mirror quotes a spokesperson on behalf of Phantom Films confirming that, “We (Phantom) are beginning with a sum of Rs 10 crore and hope to repay most of the money by the year-end.”

However, according to a source close the studio, this might be just a PR exercise by Phantom Films to refurbish their image after the debacle of Bombay Velvet and Shaandaar last year. The studio apparently has not received any compensation from Phantom yet.

Deepika Padukone and Ranbir Kapoor in Tamasha

Another report claims that Ranbir and Deepika returned Rs 10 and 5 crore respectively, to the producers of Tamasha, so that the “distributors don’t suffer heavy loses”. But a source close to the actress has said that Deepika has not made any such compensation.

Though the practice of an actor “compensating” a producer for a flop film is not new, the traditional approach has been that the actor agrees to take a pay cut while working with the same producer again, instead of paying back an amount in cash.

For now, this ‘pay back’ news seems like an image building exercise, unless one of the personalities involved comes out and makes an official statement on it.