More often than not, when a film becomes a hit, the conversation focuses on the actors. Rarely does it turn to the people behind the scenes: the producers. Dinesh Vijan, however, is an exception, having established himself as one of today’s most successful producers, with a string of memorable films under his production house Maddock Films’ belt. His latest film, the horror-comedy Thamma, has opened to strong numbers too. Excerpts from a chat:

Conviction comes from the gut. The most important decision you make is which film to make. The rest is logistics. I have a line in our company, ‘We have to be unique and audacious’. People want to be surprised when they go in a theatre. We are fortunate that we are getting to make the films we want to make.

My job at Maddock is simple: I take care of the content and a little bit of marketing. I have some beautiful people who take all the stress away from me, so I can focus on this. The day you feel there is a formula, it will be the end. Three or four years back, I remember, some social media comments said, ‘This is a Maddock kind of film,’ and my team got excited. I said, ‘This is like writing your obituary.’ We make what we love, and love is not [meant] to be finite. The day you get stuck, you would want to make films for that acceptance.

A story is never small or big. It’s about the relevance of a story. We think about money last, and that’s why we end up making money. Our most illogical bet was Chhaava. At the scale we made it, it was also about survival. We had to change the cinematic experience. Vicky Kaushal or Laxman Utekar had never made a historical film before; technically, it was not a safe film. Yet it fired [became a hit].

Generally Diwali falls in November every year; this time it fell in October. If you look at it, Animal was also released in December 2023, the same as Sam Bahadur. I feel between the two festive seasons of Diwali and Christmas, a film like Ikkis can come. We are trying to find an exact date and don’t want to clash with any other film. I have loved this story on late Lt Arun Khetarpal’s life for seven years. We got hit by Covid in between; that’s why we couldn’t start the film. I had narrated it to Sriram Raghavan all those years back; generally, he writes his own material and brings it to you. He had a tear in his eye. The idea was to do either Badlapur 2 or Ikkis; he chose this.

I am a Leo; I will obviously want to get there! Honestly, where we have come is so far. I don’t think that boy ever saw it. When you are young, with brashness, you might think so. But the answer is a no. I am fortunate my parents allowed me to do this. My father and I used to watch Amitabh Bachchan’s films together, so that desire was there somewhere. I knew my father couldn’t [pursue what he wanted] because my grandfather had a heart attack, and he had to get into the family business. But I became my father’s Simran, and he let me go. It was tough.