Karan Johar Was 'Blown Away' By Aamir Khan's Lagaan, Had Doubts About K3G's Success: 'I Was Thinking...'

Back in 1998, when Karan Johar’s directorial debut film Kuch Kuch Hota Hai film released, the filmmaker recollected that he felt extremely confident and proud when he began work for his second film Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham, as he gathered an ensemble cast of that era. However, all that self confidence was ‘shattered’, when Karan watched Karan watched Dil Chahta and Lagaan.

In an interview with Pinkvilla, Karan shared, while working for K3G, he watched other films which gave him a reality check, as he had underestimated other filmmakers. Karan said, “That year was very critical for me, not just as a filmmaker, but also as a human being. When you start flying, destiny and circumstances have a way of saying, ‘Stay in your place’. In the beginning of that year, for some reason, I was like, ‘I’m making the biggest film of the year, what’s going to get bigger than this? I’m going to sweep all the awards’. In my head I was thinking this, I wasn’t saying this out loud.”

He added, “I watched Lagaan in June, when it released, and I thought I’d seen a cinematic marvel. I felt it would go down as one of the best feature films ever made. I was blown away by it, and I thought, ‘Mine is nothing like…’ And then I saw Gadar the next day, and I went crazy about its ‘commercialness’ and ‘solidness’. The audience was going crazy. I saw Lagaan again, and the theatre had become a cricket stadium. Then I saw Chandni Bar, one of the most respected films of the year, and then I saw Dil Chahta Hai, and I had kind of grown up with Farhan. He was a naughty, bratty kind, and I thought, ‘Yeh kya banayega yaar (How good can his film be)?’”

On a closing note, he confessed, “By the end of it, from being the front-footed filmmaker, I felt that I was the underdog.” Back in December 2001, K3G which starred Amitabh Bachchan, Jaya Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan, Kajol, Kareena Kapoor, Hrithik Roshan turned out to be the highest grossing film of that year.

Karan Johar’s directorial debut film Kuch Kuch Hota Hai recently clocked 25 years recently.