Dhadkan director Sunil Darshan recalled the difficult phase Akshay Kumar went through in his career. In a recent interview, he mentioned how the actor dealt with a series of flops and maintained a strong face. Sunil, who has worked with the actor in many films, recalled that a producer insulted Akshay and told him that he was not worthy of seeing the banner of his film.

The director spoke to Friday Films and revealed that the makers had shelved Hera Pheri and Dhadkan due to Akshay’s poor performance at the box office. He said that “no distributor wanted to touch his film”, but he maintained his faith in the actor’s crowd-pulling power.

Sunil said, “Akshay came to me, and he almost had tears in his eyes. He told me that he had asked the other producer why he did not put up the banner of his film, and he told him ‘You don’t have the authority to put up the banner of your film.I got scared after seeing his nervous face. I found the biggest banner in Juhu, which had only Akshay’s face on it. The man who was a liability to everyone, I knew he would be my asset.”

Sunil achieved a major global success with Dhadkan, which, apart from Akshay, also featured Shilpa Shetty and Sunil Shetty in pivotal roles.

“Many of his films were stalled”

Elaborating on the actor’s “bad condition” at that time, Sunil shared in the interview, “There was a problem. He had many flops during that time and many of his major films were stopped midway. Like Hera Pheri , the film was 90 percent shot, and then it was blocked, four reels were made, but it was also blocked.

Earlier this year, during the trailer launch of Bade Miyan Chhote Miyan, Akshay had talked about this very phase. He shared that he learned a lot from that time but never went back. “It’s not that I haven’t (been through this phase before), there was a time in my career when I had 16 flops in a row at one go. But I stood there and kept working and will do so even now. This year This is a film that we all have worked very hard for, and now we are going to see the results, we hope it brings good luck to all of us.”

After several films that failed to impress the audience, the actor is once again looking for a big hit at the box office. Akshay has got Jolly LLB 3, Housefull 5, a yet-to-be-titled film on C Shankaran Nair and Sky Force among others.