Gehraiyaan: Karan Johar says he warned Shakun Batra about polarising reactions for Deepika Padukone’s film

Gehraiyaan is one of those films that viewers cannot seem to make up their minds about. The reactions elicited by the film from viewers seem to cover both ends of the spectrum, with some absolutely loving it to others despising it. Director Shakun Batra recently talked about how he had expected the film to give rise to such polarising responses, even revealing that producer Karan Johar had prepared the former to cope with them.

While participating in a discussion about the film, organised by Amazon Prime Video, Batra said although, he had expected different subjective reactions from viewers about the film, he did not anticipate just how vastly different the reactions would be, calling them ‘zero to hero’. Johar then interrupted to say that he had ‘prepped’ Batra for the same. Batra then went on to agree that Johar, who had decades of experience in the film industry, had predicted the film’s responses would be ‘polarised’, although the former was thrown off by the ‘intensity of the reactions’.

The filmmaker also mentioned some of the reactions, saying that while one person had sent him an email, full of abuses, a psychologist had actually appreciated the film.

The film stars Deepika Padukone, Siddhant Chaturvedi, Ananya Panday and Dhairya Karwa in lead roles along with Naseeruddin Shah and Rajat Kapoor. In addition to directing, Batra has also written the film’s script along with Ayesha Devitre, Sumit Roy and Yash Sahai. The film is produced under the banners of Dharma Productions, Viacom18 Studios and Jouska Films.

Gehraiyaan can be streamed on Amazon Prime Video.