Vikramaditya Motwane, who started his career as an assistant with Sanjay Leela Bhansali but gradually moved on to making small but successful films like ‘Udaan’, spoke about the crisis in Hindi cinema. Motwane said that while many regional industries are making progress, the Hindi film industry is, for lack of a better word, dead. He further said that before the pandemic, many smaller Hindi films like ‘Masaan’ and ‘Newton’ were getting appreciated by the theatre-going audience but that’s not the case anymore. He mentioned that the situation is ‘not good’ and ‘needs fixing’.
In a chat with ‘The Hollywood Reporter India’, he said, “There is progress being made in the south, in Malayalam, Telugu, Tamil and Kannada cinema, but in Hindi cinema, no. As far as I think, the Hindi industry is… I don’t want to say dead, that’s a really strong word.” Motwane then said that before the pandemic and the OTT era, things seemed better and said, “I think the fact that ‘Court’, ‘Masaan’ and ‘Newton’ performed in theaters but if you look at the scenario today, it’s not happening. I am talking about the Hindi industry. It is a situation that needs thought and fixing. It needs something. It isn’t a good situation.”
When asked about films like ‘Jigra’ and ‘Kill’, which are promoted as genre films but still fail to get the audience, Motwane said that their underperformance had different reasons. “I don’t think you can put the underperformance to a systemic problem. I think that’s within the film itself,” he said and spoke about films like ‘12th Fail’ and ‘Laapataa Ladies’. “When there is muscle put behind a film, there is a chance for that film to work at the box office. You take ‘Laapataa Ladies’ as an example of the fact that there is Aamir’s muscle that has been put behind that film. When a distributor shows confidence in a movie, the people will come and see it. It is pretty simple. It’s a law that’s been there for years,” he said.