Anurag Kashyap has made a bold statement, something no other director in the Bollywood would dare say. But Anurag has always been known for his controversial, but yet honest statements, he doesn’t mince his words. He doesn’t sugarcoat his words, he speaks his mind freely, even if it upsets people in the industry.
Anurag Kashyap believes that big stars like Salman Khan, Akshay Kumar, Shah Rukh Khan and Amitabh Bachchan are the reason why many studios have shut down. These big names charge such high amount and production house incurs huge losses if their films flop. They can never recover from such drastic loss, as a result they are shut down.
It has been more than a year and a half since his dream project Bombay Velvet was released. Anurag Kashyap had a lot of expectations from the project, but critics panned the film, and audiences called it a disappointment.
Kashyap feels that actors like Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan, Akshay Kumar and Amitabh Bachchan overcharge for their work, and they are definitely overpaid for their work. So what happens is that if their films bomb at the box-office, they don’t have to care about their flops. It’s the producers who are at the receiving end, they cannot recover their investment, sometimes they cannot even recover the budget of the film. The actors easily walk away and escape from the situation, they are paid for their work. Anurag Kashyap believes that this is the reason why big productions like Disney are running into a loss, he says that those times aren’t far when we’ll see many of the production houses shutting down in India.
Anurag explained the difference between Hollywood and Bollywood. He made the most logical statement, raising a very critical issue.
“We had four Bollywood actors in the Forbes highest paid actors whereas the rest were Hollywood actors. The films starring the Hollywood actors earn in millions and billions but ours earn at max Rs 300 crore. But still, there are Indian actors on that list. So if you see the ratio on the list, business of the film vs income of the actor, there is a huge disparity. Actors from the industry where film earns Rs 300 crore is on the list and on the other hand, there are films which earn 1.2 billion in other industries and the actors are even below our actors on the list. So I hope you got where the issue is.”
Anurag took a jab at these big celebrities. Although he later made it clear that it’s not these big stars who are to be blamed, it’s the producers responsible for their own demise. He said,
“I am not blaming the actors for this, all the blame should be passed on to the producers as they are ready to pay the actor such high amount. Why wouldn’t the actor take that money? If someone pays me, even I would take that.”
Do you guys agree with what Anurag said? Whether you like it or hate it, you can’t deny he’s being brutally honest, his talks make more sense than his movie. Do share your views and opinions in the comments.