Kalank Writer Hussain Dalal On Film's Debacle: I Take Full Responsibility For Maybe Having Ruined It

Karan Johar's 2019 film Kalank was a colossal disappointment at the box office. Despite a star-studded cast including Varun Dhawan, Alia Bhatt, Aditya Roy Kapur, Sonakshi Sinha, Madhuri Dixit and Sanjay Dutt, the period drama failed to impress the audience and critics.

Recently in a tete-a-tete with Bollywood Hungama, writer-actor Hussain Dalal who penned the dialogues for the film wondered if he is responsible for the failure of this big-budget film.

Speaking about how he internalizes a film's failure, Hussain told the news portal, "The thing about success is that you wake up the same person in the morning. I wake up, I'll have my chai, read the newspaper... Success is very intangible. You can't see it; it's only for the world... I've felt failure, when a movie goes down."

He further talked about how failure can affect an artiste, he explained, "For me, a big film went down two years ago; Kalank went down. And the sense of responsibility you feel, that maybe you ruined it, that your writing was so bad that people couldn't watch the film. Failure is a more tangible emotion for an artiste. Success is always in the perspective of others... Success is never for the artiste, it's always in retrospect. Failure is a great teacher, it makes an artiste..."

Hussain told Bollywood Hungama that after experiencing failure, he sensed a hesitation as he was convinced that he had ruined the film.

He wondered if Kalank would have worked if he had penned down simpler dialogues and said, "I learned. I went overboard with the poetry. Perhaps if I had simplified it, I could have communicated better. Kalank was so personal to me, such a beautiful story, I take full responsibility for maybe having ruined it a little bit with over-poetry."

Earlier, the film's producer Karan Johar had also opened up on its flop-show and said that it was his failure more than anyone else's.

Workwise, Hussain Dalal was last seen in Farhan Akhtar-Mrunal Thakur's sports drama Toofaan which premiered on Amazon Prime Video last week.