Before Abhishek Banerjee ventured into acting, he started his career as a casting director in 2010. He did the casting for films like Vidya Balan’s The Dirty Picture and Rani Mukerji’s No One Killed Jessica. However, he once thought his career was over when he was fired by Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions from Hrithik Roshan and Priyanka Chopra starrer Agneepath.
Abhishek was fired as the casting director of the film. He told Siddharth Kannan, “We were fired from Agneepath. We were casting for Agneepath, it was then taken over by Jogi (Mallang) bhai. Why were we removed? Because Karan sir didn’t like our casting.” As the film was produced by Karan Johar and directed by Karan Malhotra, it is unclear which Karan he mentioned.
“We were casting Anurag Kashyap-type actors. He didn’t like it and said, ‘Nikal jaao humaari film se (get out of our film)’. We thought our career was barbaad, khatam (our career was over) because we were thrown out of Dharma (Productions). We thought we were done, but thankfully, we survived,” he added.
Abhishek Banerjee is the co-founder of a casting agency called Casting Bay. Recently, he worked as the casting director for Priyanka Chopra and Farhan Akhtar’s The Sky is Pink and web series Paatal Lok. Meanwhile, on the acting front, he is currently seen in Stree 2 and Vedaa.
Stree 2, starring Shraddha Kapoor, Rajkummar Rao, Aparshakti Khurana, Abhishek Banerjee, and Pankaj Tripathi, is making waves at the box office with a phenomenal start. The film raked in an impressive Rs 60.3 crore net in India on its first day, with its gross collection standing at around Rs 76.5 crore. On its second day, the film added another Rs 30 crore to its net total, bringing the cumulative net collection to Rs 90.3 crore. This solid performance has propelled Stree 2’s gross earnings past the Rs 100 crore mark, a significant achievement for a film of its genre.
Vedaa, directed by Nikhil Advani and starring John Abraham and Sharvari, made a decent start at the box office on its opening day, earning Rs 6.52 crore across all languages. Released on the Independence Day holiday, the film had a 35.63 per cent occupancy rate in Hindi on Thursday, August 15, 2024, according to Sacnilk.com. The film earned Rs 1.60 crore on day 2.
Despite the favourable timing of its release, Vedaa faced tough competition from Stree 2, the horror-comedy that has dominated the box office this season. As the second most preferred movie choice among Hindi releases, Vedaa performed well, considering the circumstances. The competition with Stree 2 limited its screen availability, but that’s a common challenge during major holiday weekends.
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