Shoojit Sircar's "Pink" highlighted the importance of consent, a film that not only won box office battle but also a National award, and writer Ritesh Shah says producers were not ready to back it as they did not find any merit in the story.
Released on September 16, 2016, "Pink", featured megastar Amitabh Bachchan as a lawyer defending three girls, Taapsee Pannu, Kirti Kulhari and Andrea Tariang, who were molested.
"It isn't easy to attract people to theatre to see a film about consent. For three years it didn't get made. No production house no corporate stepped forward.
"I was so sure at one of the corporate houses that the film will be approved because there were about 20 odd people, most of them young and many girls. I thought here it'll work. But they were like 'what is the big deal?'," Shah told PTI.
"Pink" was produced by Ronnie Lahiri, Sheel Kuma and Shoojit acting as a creative producer.
Things, however, changed once the film was out and received a lot of love.
"Later some of the studios were apologising. I said no point apologising now, if you couldn't see it you couldn't see it. Somebody like a Shoojit Sircar could see the film on paper, others couldn't."
"There was a lot of time we felt it would be filmy if the girls win. We also thought if they lose, why are we making this film? My spouse said it's like you are taking us on a fight and then throwing an ice cold water on us. We were conflicted about it till the end."
"Somebody sent me a picture on Facebook of a coffee mug which had 'no is a complete sentence' written on it. I thought I want to write something around this for the final argument because it is important. So I saved the picture and showed it to Bachchan sir."
When the team returned to Mumbai to shoot the court sequences, Shah was ready with six to eighth lines, including the clincher, "no means no."
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