'Social media managers, bouncers, their catering department people... they tell the actor whether he should do a film or not.'
Salman Khan's big Eid release Sikandar was meant to give the Bollywood box office the hit it craves. But its dwindling collections have raised serious concern and trade analysts like Taran Adarsh and Komal Nahta speak out.
"Today's actors live in a bubble, disconnected from reality," Taran Adarsh tells ANI.
"The industry needs to return to authentic storytelling and audience connection if it wants to revive its golden days.
"The number of successful films was much higher earlier. Today, for every one successful movie, about eight to 10 films fail in sequence. This is a concerning trend for the Hindi film industry," he said.
The state of the Hindi film industry, he added, is bad "because films often fail to connect with the common audience. This is why cinema halls are running empty. One major reason is that the industry is not giving audiences what they truly want."/p>
Taran Adarsh reflected on the latest pattern of Hindi films and said that most movies are flopping because they are metro-centric in nature and lack entertainment for the mass audience.
"We are making films keeping the cities in mind. Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Bangalore and Hyderabad. What should the majority audience see? The mass belts, the Hindi circuit, what should they see? They want to see films full of local entertainment," said Adarsh.
He cited the example of the Allu Arjun starrer Pushpa and the Rajkummar Rao starrer Stree's box office collections to attribute the location factor as one of the reasons for the film's success in Bollywood.
"Pushpa, why did you do so much business? Why did Stree do so much business? Before that, Jawan, Pathan, Animal or Gadar. Why were they so successful? Or recently, Chhaava. It is going close to Rs 600 crore (Rs 6 billion
"The main reason is that the audience is happy to see that film. But if you don't make good films, you can't expect the audience to break into cinemas and your film to be successful," said Adarsh.
He also highlighted the growing influence of social media managers and other staff members of actors, which has impacted the film selection by celebrities.
"Earlier, the producer or director would tell their story to the actors. In the 1970s and 80s, we used to go and meet people. Today, there are 25 people surrounded. Social media managers, bouncers, their entire staff, their catering department people... they listen to these stories today and they tell the actor whether he should do it or not," said Taran Adarsh.
Komal Nahta attributes another reason for the films' poor box office collections.
"The laziness of scriptwriters is the only reason for the series of Bollywood films flopping," he says.
"The lack of passion among scriptwriters is the reason for the downfall of good stories in Bollywood. Nowadays, writers don't revise or rehash their stories as they expect their first draft to be accepted as the final draft."
While citing the example of Director Rajkumar Hirani and Writer Abhijat Joshi, Nahta highlighted the passion for writing in successful filmmakers to produce good stories.
"Rajkumar Hirani and Abhijat Joshi, their writing team, they said that how many times we have written 80 percent of the script and said it is not working, let's cancel it."
"This is script writing, and this is passionate filmmaking. If you think that what I have written is right, then the public will not necessarily accept what you have written or the film that you have made; they will like it. You have got to be honest to yourself."
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