The success of ‘Raja Shivaji’ has brought attention to the cast and their decision to be part of the film for reasons beyond money. Abhishek Bachchan clarified the rumours about fees.
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Riteish Deshmukh’s big Marathi film ‘Raja Shivaji’ is having a solid run in cinemas right now. Audiences are loving it, and the money coming in keeps growing. But the story behind how this film got made is just as interesting as the film itself.
Riteish Deshmukh recently opened up about something that surprised many people. He shared that some of Bollywood’s biggest names like Salman Khan, Vidya Balan, and Abhishek Bachchan did not take any money for their roles in the film. Not a single rupee. Riteish said their reason was simple: a genuine love and respect for Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, and their personal friendship with him.
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When this news spread online, some social media posts and reels started throwing around wrong numbers and made-up “facts” about how much the cast supposedly charged. Abhishek Bachchan wasn’t having it. He spoke directly to News18 and addressed the false claims head-on.
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He pointed out that today everyone is making reels about “facts and figures” without checking if those facts are even real.
Abhishek explained his thinking in a very honest and refreshing way. He said that actors do not always think in terms of money when they connect with a story. If a film means something to them, if they truly believe in what it’s trying to say, they will happily cut their fee or drop it entirely.
“The media loves to talk about an actor charging so much money and demanding so many vans,” he said. But he pushed back on that image. Art, he said, does not begin with a number. It begins with a feeling. “You have to be inspired. That’s how art starts,” he added. For Abhishek, working on ‘Raja Shivaji’ was not a business deal. It was a decision that came from the heart.
Abhishek did not stop at defending his decision to work for free. He used the moment to give a proper shoutout to Riteish Deshmukh and his wife Genelia Deshmukh, who produced the film together.
He noted that in today’s film world, almost every big project is driven by calculations; box office projections, opening weekend targets, recovery timelines. Riteish and Genelia chose a different path. “They never approached it as a project. It was very sacred to them,” Abhishek said. Their goal was to tell a story that was bigger than any of them individually, and they believed in it fully, without worrying about whether the numbers would add up.
Abhishek also spoke about what it was like to actually be on set. ‘Raja Shivaji’ is not a small film. The scale of the production is something Marathi cinema has rarely seen before. Big sets, big sequences, big logistical challenges. Despite all of that, Abhishek said the shoot ran smoothly and the team felt well taken care of.
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