I remember after the release you told me you had never seen so much money in your life.

“It’s true. DDLJ has done many things for me. It has helped us to realize so many of our dreams. When I came to realize that distributors aren’t quite upfront in their dealings I decided to become my own distributor. For the first time we saw big money. I asked my son what he wanted. He said he wanted that we should’ve our own studio. Today we’re ready to open our own state-of-the-art studio, thanks to DDLJ.”

How important is marketing for a movie?

“Very important. But you can’t sell a product that the audience doesn’t want. Out of the 150-200 films being released per year the audience chooses to go to theatres for 10. You’ve to make sure you bring the audiences in to see those 10 films through promotion and marketing. Word-of-mouth publicity is a myth. The only recent film that ran by this method was my elder brother B R Chopra’s Baghban. It was such a brilliant subject. My brother lived with the idea for twenty years.”

Today YRF is the largest filmmaking empire in the country

“It’s a scary thing. We try to make the films that we believe in. Every Friday a new destiny is chalked out for some filmmakers, not just in India but all over the world. The cinema business has become unpredictable. All we can do is work with sincerity.”