Tarun Mansukhani breaks silence on scrapped Anushka-Sidharth film: "Yes, there was an idea but..."

Director Tarun Mansukhani is currently basking in the success of his film 'Housefull 5, which has been doing wonders at the box office despite receiving mixed reviews from critics and audiences. Amid that, he got into a candid conversation with India Forums and talked about various things ranging from the criticism of Housefull 5 to unfinished projects and his absence from the industry for more than 15 years.

When questioned- "We heard that a long time ago, you were planning to adapt a French film into a Bollywood movie, and had Anushka Sharma and Sidharth Malhotra in mind. Could you tell us more about that?"

Mansukhani said, "Yes, it was a long time ago. There was a film called Priceless, if I'm not mistaken. I think it was called Priceless. A very lovely film, I really enjoyed it. At that time, there were talks of us doing it. I think I even started trying to write it at some point. But then, other things happened in my life that kind of took me away from filmmaking. It was divorce; there was a lot of debt and all of that. I wasn't in the right mind space then to make a film. I needed to get rid of that entire financial trouble before I came back to films."

"There was a film called Priceless, if I'm not mistaken. I think it was called Priceless. A very lovely film, I really enjoyed it. At that time, there were talks of us doing it. I think I even started trying to write it at some point. But then, other things happened in my life"

- Tarun Mansukhani

He added, "I didn't want to make money on films to pay off that loan because then I would be making a film for a different reason and not because I wanted to make a film. So I decided at that point, very clearly, that I was going to get rid of this part of my life. I'm going to get rid of my debts. I'm going to get over it. I did. I got so many other jobs in the meantime quietly, I would do lots of other things. I paid off those loans, became debt-free, and then came back to filmmaking."

Tarun Mansukhani, after directing Dostana, helmed 'Drive' in 2015 and then took a break from filmmaking. He made a blockbuster comeback with Housefull 5, and the film starring an ensemble cast is currently running in the theatres near you.