Vignesh Shivan: 'LIK didn't hit 100cr, I imagined double'

Vignesh Shivan posted a long, unguarded note on Instagram on Friday night picking apart how Love Insurance Kompany landed in theatres. The Pradeep Ranganathan-led sci-fi rom-com closed its theatrical run at 70 crore before moving to Prime Video on May 6, and the director’s reflection began with the gap between what he wanted and what he got.

“I came with a dream. Not small, not safe. A storm of belief that this story would echo in crores and shake the walls of cinema,” he wrote. “But still the benchmark of 100 crores wasn’t touched. I was imagining double of that to be honest.”

The harder lines came after. He wrote that he had expected calls from peers he respected, voices he admired, and instead got “mixed words, measured smiles, questions louder than praise.” On the 70 crore figure he was direct: “Not the biggest. Not the loudest. But real and earned.” Forty crore of that, he noted, came in after the word “average” had begun trailing the film. “That is love. Love that walked into theatres despite the noise. Love that trusted beyond reviews.”

The Insightful Reels review of the film was on the polite side of mixed and tracked with the wider read. Vignesh Shivan ended the note thanking fans for their long DMs, including critical ones, with a line that sat harder than the rest: “Am learning, will keep learning.”