Bollywood has been going through a rather low phase for the last couple of years with only a few films earning decent money at the box office and amid all of this, the conversation around a star’s entourage cost has gained steam. It has been reported that the support staff of a film star ends up increasing the cost of the film and with such high budgets, the films are not able to recover their cost upon release. Sunny Deol, however, has been travelling with a giant entourage for years, as shared by actor Puneet Issar. Puneet shared an incident from the shoot of Border, which released in 1997, and said that even back then Sunny would travel “like a king” and had a truck full of his stuff following him around. But, Puneet claimed that Sunny wasn’t burdening his producer with the extra cost.
“Sunny raja aadmi hai. Voh jahan jaata hai raja ki tarah jata hai. Uska pura entourage chalta hai. Uske cooks bhi aayenge, badminton ka court bhi hoga, pura gym jayega. (Sunny is a king. He travels like a king. His entourage travels with him. His cooks also accompany him, his badminton court will also be there, the entire gym set up will also be with him),” Puneet shared in a chat with Siddharth Kannan on his YouTube channel. When asked if he travels with a truck full of his supplies, Puneet said, “He will ask you that I am travelling with all of this weight, if there is anything that you also want to carry so he can load it up as well.”
“Sunny is like king, like an emperor. That’s the way Sunny Deol is,” he said.
When asked about the increased entourage cost that has been affecting films’ budgets in the last few years, Puneet said that things were different back then and added, “I don’t think Sunny would put the bill on the producer. That’s why I said, he is a king. Even Salman is like that. It’s a requirement, it’s a must for them, they need it, they have to workout.”
ALSO READ | Mumtaz opens up on Fardeen Khan’s divorce with daughter Natasha Madhwani: ‘They have separated, every marriage has its ups and downs’
Puneet said that as far as having multiple people in the entourage is concerned, all the big stars in their heyday were always surrounded by many of their own people. He named actors like Rajesh Khanna, Dharmendra, Vinod Khanna, Shatrughan Sinha, Dilip Kumar and said that they too, always had multiple people in their entourage.
Previously, in a chat with Humans of Cinema, director Anurag Kashyap said that a lot of money was being spent on “paraphernalia” around the film. “They are not spending the money on the film. People need to come back to this whole reality check. One thing people need to understand is that when we make a film, we’re working, we’re creating something. It’s not a holiday, it’s not a picnic. A lot of money that is spent doesn’t go into making the film. It goes into the paraphernalia; it goes into the entourage. You’re shooting in the middle of a jungle, but one car will be sent to the city three hours away specifically to get you that five-star burger you want. You don’t get into the process of it,” he said.
