Nani admits The Paradise 'was rushed', says could've been better with more time

Nani has admitted that The Paradise was rushed in post-production, and believes the film could have been better had the team been given more time to work on the edit and score.The actor opened up about the film’s mixed response in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter India, saying the makers were aware that the tight deadline could affect the final product. They had already pushed the release twice and didn’t want to disappoint an audience that had been waiting for the film.“We're in a place where we're just thinking backwards, given the reactions. We're also aware of the timing. With the less post-production time, we rushed things a little bit,” Nani said.The Paradise was initially scheduled to release on March 26 before moving to August 21 and eventually September 25. By the time the third date arrived, the team chose not to push it again. The delay had also helped the film avoid clashes with Ranveer Singh’s Dhurandhar 2: The Revenge and Yash’s Toxic: A Fairytale for Grownups.Nani said the decision came down to balancing the film’s needs with the audience’s anticipation. “This was the third release date. The audience was so excited about the film that we didn't want to give up on them because of the postponement that happened so many times,” he said.But, in hindsight, he feels some parts could have been worked on more. “More things would have made sense narratively with the edit and the score, if we had more time. We could've smoothened it out,” Nani said. He also acknowledged the “little glitches” viewers had pointed out, including parts of the film feeling “a little jumpy”.Whether another few weeks in the edit would have changed the film’s fate is something the team will never know. “We could've made all of that better, but we'll never know, I guess. We don't know if it would've worked better had we pushed the film,” Nani said.For him, the bigger takeaway is to learn from what didn’t work. “We all get carried away and do mistakes. But if we understand and learn from them, that's the best way we can go ahead,” he added.Nani says The Paradise lost some of its original focusThe mixed response appears to have hit harder because The Paradise came with considerable expectations. It marked Nani’s second collaboration with director Srikanth Odela after Dasara, their 2023 action drama that went on to earn Rs 121 crore worldwide on a reported budget of Rs 65 crore.The Paradise was a much bigger production, with its budget estimated at Rs 150 crore – Rs 200 crore. But Nani feels that scaling up the film may have also affected what made Odela’s storytelling special.“With The Paradise, Srikanth had great ideas. But when the span of the film went up, when the expectations went up, the focus shifted from storytelling to set pieces. So, the connectivity wasn't there,” he said.Nani remains firmly in Odela’s corner, though. He called him “one of the best talents we have” and said he’d still bet on the filmmaker. “He's a very, very original guy. He has a lot of ideas, but after stitching them together, his bigger vision somewhere got a little diluted,” Nani said.That, he added, is what made the polarised response particularly difficult to take. Both he and Odela had gone into the film with expectations riding high after Dasara.Despite the criticism, The Paradise has had a strong commercial run in several markets. It opened at Rs 11.60 crore from 900 screens in India and became the biggest opening of Nani’s 18-year career. It also became his first film to cross Rs 100 crore at the domestic box office.Set in a Secunderabad slum in the 1980s, The Paradise stars Nani as Sarakka, a tribal leader, with Raghav Juyal as the antagonist. Sonali Kulkarni, Mohan Babu and Easwari Rao also feature in the film.- Ends