Oscar-winning producer Guneet Monga recently sat down for an interview with NDTV and spoke about her work relationship with Karan Johar and Dharma Productions. ICYDK, Guneet and KJo reunited for projects like Lunchbox, Kill and Gyaarah Gyaarah. She said, “I just have one word for Karan and Dharma, and that is empowering. He is damn empowering and the faith he has shown in me. It all started when I reached out to him during a dinner at Cannes in 2013. I was there with The Lunchbox, and he was there with Bombay Talkies. It was the 100th year of Indian cinema, and I had also produced Murabba.
At the dinner, I walked up to his table and said, ‘Hi Karan, this is Guneet. I’m a producer and I work with Anurag Kashyap. I’ve made a film that’s getting a lot of attention here, but we don’t have distribution in India. Do you think you could distribute the film?’ He said, ‘Okay, why don’t you come up and show me the film?’ I asked for his phone number, and I replied, ‘Are you sure this is not your secretary’s number?’ He assured me, ‘No, this is my number. Please call me when you’re back in India.’
“The next day I texted him, we were at the awards ceremony at Cannes and I told him I’d love to host a screening for him. We did, and after the screening, he came out with tears in his eyes and said, ‘I love it.’ That moment changed the trajectory of the film in India. The reason The Lunchbox became so popular in India is because of the role Dharma played in it. He has championed it. Karan is one of the best marketing minds I’ve ever seen—he’s a genius. I just observed and learned from him. He turned around every negative narrative about The Lunchbox. There were studios telling me, ‘It doesn’t have songs, you’ve cast older actors, nobody will watch it, there’s too much English in the film, how do you promote this?’ But Karan and Dharma flipped all those narratives on their head. I learned so much from them,” she added.
Guneet Monga concluded, “For the past decade, Apoorva, Karan, and I had been talking about working together, and Kill happened after one such meeting. Karan is an absolute cinephile, and he said, ‘Let’s do this—it’s a genre that’s never been done before in India, and I’d love to bring an all-out extreme film to the audience.'”