Actors Akshay Kumar and Ram Charan during a recent event discussed the directions to achieve success for Bollywood after the Hindi movie industry saw several box office failures following the Covid pandemic re-opening.
Directions to achieve success for Bollywood
Akshay Kumar, whose recent movies like Samrat Prithwiraj, Raksha Bandhan, Bachchhan Pandey–did not fare well at the box office, said that the film industry is in alarming need to reinvent itself.
Since the Covid pandemic, movie lovers have not quite come back to theatres for Bollywood movies. Several flicks that were built up to be a blockbuster, failed miserably at the box office after their release. At the 20th Hindustan Times Leadership Summit, Ram Charan and Akshay Kumar took the stage to discuss the latest situation in the Hindi film industry.
Actor Akshay Kumar said, “Things have changed. The audience wants something different. It is our fault that they’re not coming to the theatres. We have to give them something they want.”
Stressing the fact that the film industry needs to reinvent itself, Kumar said that he has been in the entertainment industry for over 30 years and the tastes of the audience are changing.
“We have to dismantle and rebuild, reinvent everything. We have to start all over again”, says Akshay.
Just call it ‘Indian Cinema’
Meanwhile, Ram Charan also agreed upon the same and said that the film industry also needs to erase the differences between regional cinema which people distinguish as Bollywood films, and South movies. They both agreed that the film industry needs to come together to better the quality of Indian cinema.
Akshay Kumar pointed out that the most important factor which is ‘the price of making a movie and the subsequent ticketing needs to be reduced by at least 30-40%’.
Akshay stressed that actors need to charge less money, prices of tickets need to be reduced and the overall money it requires in the making of a cinema needs to be reduced for cinema-goers to return to cinema halls. “You have to do this if you want the public to come back to the theatre,” he added.
Akshay Kumar further stated that any movie will reach the ‘epic’ standard only when it is multi-cast. Taking the example of Marvel movies, Kumar said, “Look at Hollywood, what kind of movies they’re bringing. It’s Marvel movies where everyone comes together and people want to see that. They want to experience and enjoy. The audience wants a story and much more. They don’t want to just give their money, they want a value for it,” he said. “We need to all get together and do the big cinema”.
Both Akshay Kumar and Ram Charan felt that the film industry needs to acknowledge and work around their audience’s changing tastes and viewing traditions. From an uncontrolled shift to OTT platforms to larger-than-life movies, both actors emphasized that audience preferences have changed.
“It’s very tricky at the moment. People require to see larger-than-life, an epic films like RRR or Sooryavanshi…I think people want to watch that big cinema and we have to try to start making that. You have to cater to OTT also and cinema-going audiences also. I just hope one day, people come for all kinds of cinema,” Kumar said.
