Widely known as Bollywood’s first family - the Kapoors have jointly decided to sell the famous RK Studio built by the late Raj Kapoor. The 2 acre studio is situated in Mumbai’s Chembur suburb and used to be buzzing with film shoots in the 1970s and 80s. It wasn’t just Raj Kapoor’s films that were shot here, several of Manmohan Desai, Prakash Mehra and Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s blockbusters were filmed here.
Chembur incidentally is one of the largest suburbs in eastern Mumbai. A realtor who deals in plot sales in the Chembur area says that a 2 acre plot in a residential area in the suburb could at the current rates fetch around Rs 500 crore to the seller.
Speaking to Mumbai Mirror, Rishi Kapoor had earlier said that though the Kapoor family did think about the option of renovating RK Studio to keep it running, it was not an economically viable option. “The investment in rebuilding the studio would just not have yielded sufficient revenue to keep it going. Believe me, we had to take the larger picture into account and take a level-headed decision. Even before the fire, for years R. K. Studio had become a huge white elephant, toting up losses. The few bookings we would get from films, TV serials and ad shoots would expect free parking space, air-conditioning and discounts,” said Rishi Kapoor.
Kareena Kapoor Khan told the media that the decision to sell RK Studio was clearly something her father Randhir Kapoor and his brothers had made and she supported their decision.
"I don't know how far what is actually happening. In fact, I have been quite under the weather and I haven't even met my father in the last four or five days. But of course, we have all grown up walking around in those corridors. I think it's probably something that the family has decided, so it's upto my father, his brothers and up to them... If that's what they have decided, so be it," said Kareena, when asked about the sale.
Speaking to The Quint, Randhir Kapoor said that there the fire in RK Studio in 2017 had destroyed almost everything, “We had to dismantle the entire place after the fire. It’s even more an emotional loss than monetary loss. We have lost the entire memorabilia of Raj Kapoor. Whatever Raj Kapoor had built has been burnt down. Everything is gone.”
Randhir Kapoor also told us why rebuilding RK Studio would have not been economically viable for the Kapoors. “With the state of the roads and traffic today, no actor comes to Chembur to shoot in this studio. They would rather go to Film City. So, with a very heavy heart, we have decided to let it go. My whole family is very sad, but there’s no other way,” said an emotional Randhir.
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