4 minutes of readingBombayFebruary 3, 2026 07:52 pm IST
While 2025 turned out to be a defining year for Akshay Kumar, with hits like Kesari Chapter 2Housefull 5 and Jolly LLB 3, came after a prolonged decline. In the previous years, Akshay had struggled at the box office, facing backlash on social media and raising questions about whether his time in movies was over. Amid a series of post-pandemic flops, one notable flop was the 2023 disaster drama Mission Raniganj, directed and written by duo Tinu Desai and Vipul K Rawal, who had earlier delivered the blockbuster Rustom for Akshay. However, the trio could not recreate the same success and the film ultimately flopped.
In a conversation with Moviefied, Vipul K Rawal, the scriptwriter of the film, revealed the reason for the failure: “The story was decent, not that bad at all. The filmmaking was also very good, but I don’t know, some projects are doomed to fail from day one, and this was one of those projects.”
He also questioned the logic behind shooting a film set in West Bengal in London: “Mujhe toh samjh nahi aaya ki ye West Bengal ki movie this, isko England mein shoot kiya tha producers ne. Kya zaroorat hai? Just because kuch subsidy mil rahi hai, toh aap kuch jhool jhal karke, 1 ka 4 dekhake subsidy loge. Abhi England waalon ne duniya par raaj kiya hai, woh itne bewakoof thodi hai, samjh mein nahi aajayega unko ki jhol jhapata chal raha hai iss mein. Parliament mein question raise ho gaya, subsidy sabki bandh karwadi, jo genuine record thay unki bhi bandh hogayi. (I didn’t understand why a West Bengal film was shot in England. What was the need? Just because you get some subsidy, you try to manipulate things. The British are not stupid, they would figure out the trick. The issue was even raised in Parliament, and subsidies were cut for everyone, including those who really deserved them. What was the point of bringing a Bengali film to London? It just didn’t make sense to me.)
Batti Gul Meter Chalu failed because the director was a ‘fool’
Vipul K Rawal cited a similar reason for the failure of another film he co-wrote, Batti Gul Meter Chalu, starring Shahid Kapoor: “Look, the director matters a lot. I don’t know what our director (Shree Narayan Singh) was thinking, why did he relocate a story set in Mumbai to Uttarakhand? Because there was a subsidy. He had tea with the DM and the CM approved the grant. There should be a reason. “You can’t just change the setting of a story like that.”
Vipul K Rawal, co-writer of Batti Gul Meter Chalu, revealed that the director decided to shift the film’s setting from Mumbai to Uttarakhand because he was receiving a grant.
He went on to admit that he realized that the film was doomed to fail right after the first narration with the director and Shahid Kapoor. “So, at the first meeting at Shahid’s house, the director brought in two new writers (Siddharth-Garima). I didn’t know what they were talking about, but I had the feeling that my film was doomed to fail. I left it and said: do what you want.” He added: “This is what happens when a director tries to become a writer. The whole story was ruined, the script was ruined. Silly, idiot. I don’t blame Shahid at all; “It was entirely the director’s decision to change the story and move it to Uttarakhand.”
Vipul K Rawal recently co-wrote Emraan Hashmi’s web series Taskaree: The Smuggler’s Web, which has done very well on the streaming platform Netflix.