Sabbir made his directorial debut with the 2009 film 'Kambakkht Ishq' which bombed at the box office. It had Akshay Kumar, Kareena Kapoor and Hollywood actor Sylvester Stallone in a cameo appearance.
"My producer (Sajid Nadiadwala) said the film was his biggest money spinner and Akshay tells it is one of his favourite films. I feel what might not have hit the mark was when I was making the film, I was catering to Akshay's huge fan following who already had high dose of comedy with other films and may be they were saturated... that was too much," Sabbir told PTI.
"Besides that I don't know what went wrong. I feel less success is far more interesting and makes you learn more," he said. Because of the failure of 'Kambakkht Ishq', Sabbir took time to come up with this next venture 'Heropanti'.
"As a filmmaker I wanted to learn what is right and wrong. It took time for me to get the story which has to be interesting and once I was sure, then only I made 'Heropanti'," he said. In 'Heropanti', Sabbir is launching actor Jackie Shroff's son Tiger and newcomer Kriti Sanon in Bollywood. The film is the story of two young conflicting protagonists, their battles with society and their coming of age love story.
Presented by UTV Motion Pictures & Nadiadwala Grandson Entertainment, the movie is slated to release on May 23. Sabbir is also working on a couple of ideas but did not reveal any details about the projects.