Bhushan Kumar Reacts To Rajkummar's Srikanth Missing Oscar Entry: 'National Award Is Bigger Deal' | Exclusive

The release of Srikanth led to a number of predictions. Many had tipped the film as a strong National Award contender with Rajkummar Rao widely predicted to bag the Best Actor award for his performance. Some also felt that it could be India’s official entry to the Oscars. And though Srikanth was among the top five films shortlisted by the internal selection jury, it failed to get the final nod.

Eventually, it won the Best Hindi Feature Film award at the 72nd National Film Awards. Speaking exclusively to News18, producer Bhushan Kumar says, “As an Indian, winning the National Award is a bigger deal than the Oscars. The National Awards is our country’s highest honour.” But was he upset with Srikanth missing out on becoming India’s official Oscar entry?

“There are many layers to that conversation. You’ve to cross many stages to reach the Oscars. Making a good quality film isn’t enough. There are many factors involved. It’s a complicated thing and that’s why I didn’t hope for it. There are so many things that need to be done to reach the Oscars,” he tells us. But co-producer Nidhi Parmar Hiranandani shares that the big miss led her to ‘not have hopes’.

“Yes, there were talks about our film being considered for Oscars many times, which never happened. But I don’t think anyone sat down and had a serious discussion about it at all. However, that’s also why, the National Award was something we didn’t even think about. But then the news came out of nowhere. Any honour is good but the National Award is an honour everybody wants,” she remarks.

Reportedly, Srikanth was made on a budget of Rs 27 crore and it ended up minting about Rs 50 crore at the domestic box office. But putting the film together during the pandemic was no cakewalk due to budgetary constraints. Talking about it, Kumar says, “There wasn’t any pay cuts. But we had to discuss the remuneration structures because this is a different kind of a film.”

“We had zeroed down on the number right since the very beginning and yes, it was much lesser than the money that Rajkummar was charging for other films. We created a set-up keeping in mind the correct costing and budget. We had explained the same to all the actors. In fact, there was no budget to cast Sharad Kelkar,” he adds. For the unversed, Sharad charged one rupee for Srikanth.

Elucidating further on the challenges they faced, Kumar states, “Using the budget of 65 days, the film was finished shooting in 42 days. A lot of money was saved during the production. We were coming out of Covid-19. Half of the theatres had shut down. We went on to hold the film and it couldn’t release on the scheduled date. But we’re happy that all the risks we took paid off.”