The last hit of Sanjay Dutt's purple patch.
Between Thanedaar in 1990 and Aatish in 1994 Dutt was by far the biggest star in the country. He had monster hits like Thanedaar, Saajan, Sadak and Khalnayak. Then there were decent hits like Gumrah and Aatish. Even a few of his mediocre movies at the time made decent profits for the producers, films like Fateh, Adharm and Zamane Se Kya Darna.
It is no coincidence that Dutt's time in prison marked the rise of future stars like Aamir, Shah Rukh, Salman, Ajay and Akshay.
Dutt returned with many memorable films like Vaastav, Mission Kashmir, Kaante, Munna Bhai etc but could never reclaim the No.1 spot again.
In that sense Aatish remains a significant film.
Sanjay Dutt was shooting in Mauritius for the film when his name came out in 1993 Bombay blast case on his return he was arrested from the airport and taken for interrogation by the Bombay police.
Sanjay Gupta blasted Karishma Kapoor in several interviews. She refused to wear a mini skirt in a song. But agreed to do a vulgar khatiya song in Raja Babu. This angered Sanjay and he complained about this for months.
Debut film of Sanjay Gupta as director.
Raveena Tandon and Karisma Kapoor had a huge verbal fight on the sets of Aatish. They were not even seeing each other eye to eye due to their animosity. Sanjay Gupta had a lot of difficulty to convince Raveena and Karisma to shoot together for scenes that required them to talk to each other as they were not on talking terms with each other during the shooting of Aatish.