Last Updated:December 15, 2025, 08:52 IST Madhur Bhandarkar recalls making Chandni Bar on an extremely small budget and explains why Heroine needed far more money despite being a very different film. Madhur Bhandarkar on how Chandni Bar was criticised. In Bollywood, bigger stars often mean bigger money. But filmmaker Madhur Bhandarkar believes that budgets should follow the story, not the scale of fame attached to it. Looking back at his career, the director has often pointed out how dramatically budgets can change from one film to another — even within his own filmography. One of his most striking comparisons came when he spoke about the gap between his early, raw cinema and his later, more glamorous films. A comparison that says it all Talking about the making of Chandni Bar (2001), Madhur Bhandarkar once revealed just how modest the budget of the National Award-winning film really was. The director compared it to the scale of his 2012 film Heroine, which starred Kareena Kapoor. “I made the movie (Chandni Bar) on a very small budget. So …