As much as he claims to leave the business side of things to his Dharma Productions CEO, filmmaker Karan Johar is one of the most astute observers of the film industry. In a roundtable discussion hosted by Galatta Plus, Karan discussed the issues plaguing Bollywood in particular and revealed some intriguing details about how he calculates a film’s chances of success.
While “normalcy” has returned to the Indian film industry, Karan claims that the Hindi industry is particularly troubled. He said, “What’s happening in Hindi is that the major belts and I’m going to get slightly technical so that everyone understands, Mumbai and Delhi, which account for 60% to 70% of the number that comes in, haven’t been acting as consistently as they did before the pandemic. So far, only spectacle films, even if dubbed, have proven to be effective.”
Observing that the biggest hits in the Hindi-speaking belt are dubbed films KGF: Chapter 2, RRR, and Baahubali 2. “The market has been behaving very erratically… Always know that if the heartland and Gujarat step on board, nothing stops you. You can never do a large number when those two territories are distant from your film. So, Gujarat, and CPCI Rajasthan have to step on board, and that’s just how the business model works,” Karan said.
He claims that once upon a time, Hindi filmmakers were trendsetters, but in the 1980s, they became trend chasers, making remake after remake of South Indian hits. Karan blamed himself for contributing to the problem, “After Hum Aapke Hain Koun, everyone, including myself, decided to join the love train, and Shah Rukh Khan was born. We let go of all our roots beginning in the 1970s, and when Lagaan was nominated for an Academy Award in 2001, we thought, ‘Oh, now we’ll do these kinds of films,’ right up until the 2010s. My Name is Khan is still a root of Lagaan, in my head, which was released alongside Dabangg, which again (changed trends) and people were like, ‘Now let’s start making commercial films again’. That is the issue; we lack both the spine and the conviction.”
Commenting on Bollywood’s problems, SS Rajamouli says that corporates pay artists so much that they lose the hunger to succeed. He said that the way to success is to understand what the audience expects and make films according to it. If the Hindi film industry wants to have an environment similar to the success found in South Indian cinema, they have to swim more, otherwise, they will drown.
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