Bollywood star Rani Mukerji was in a refreshingly frank mood at the FICCI Frames media industry conference in Mumbai, where he offered frank opinions on the Indian theatrical business.
The usual Hindi-language dominance at the pan-India box office was reversed for a period from 2021-22, when films from South India, including ‘RRR’, ‘Kantara’, ‘Ponniyin Selvan’ and ‘Vikram’, dominated, and their northern counterparts from ‘ Bollywood” to achieve great successes. Since then, the competition between North and South has developed again.
In 2023, there were only three South Indian films in the top 10 at the box office, namely ‘Salaar’, ‘Jailer’ and ‘Leo’, at positions four, six and seven respectively. However, Hindi-language films made by South Indian directors – “Joan” in first place and “Animal” in third place – did very well.
“They listen to what the public wants,” Mukherjee said. “When cinema evolves and everyone tries to cater to a diverse audience, sometimes you lose touch with the popular or overwhelming desire of the audience to see simple storytelling, as opposed to storytelling, which is more diverse or more sophisticated and more relevant to the audience.” A certain section of audiences may still be very simple in their hearts and may connect with the simple story that the audience wants from the filmmakers and that is what they realize and do.
I have worked with a lot of South Indian filmmakers during my career and learned a lot from them. The most wonderful part about southern industries, what I see is that there is a lot of unity. They stand together and support each other. “I see a lot of these events where directors go to each other’s music openings or movie trailers and pose together,” Mukerji said. “And of course, this happens in our (Indian) industry as well. The beautiful part is that when you talk to them, they say they learned from us. When they talk to us, we say we learn from them, and it’s always give and take. The beautiful thing here is that Indian cinema is learning and looking inward.” “And in the middle, they should say that our cinema is inspired by the West, or that people imitate the West. Today, it is very nice for people to be inspired by their films because we have to make films that meet the needs of our audience. We have to listen to the voice of our audience.”
The voice of the audience has been heard in director Mukerji’s hit 2023 theatrical release Mrs. Chatterjee vs. Norway, produced by Zee Studios and Emayy Entertainment, and directed by Ashima Chibber. The film was released at a time when there were so-called “content films”, a term Often used in India to describe films with a strong story rather than big-budget, star-driven shows, Mukerji said her contract stipulated that the film would get a theatrical release and her decision has paid off.
Mukherjee is married to producer Aditya Chopra and together they are the directors of leading Indian studio Yash Raj Films. The actor revealed that there were several films made before the pandemic that were ready for release, and instead of following the then industry practice of selling them to streaming companies for big sums, Chopra decided to wait for them and release them theatrically.
“All these films failed because after the pandemic, the way audiences were watching content changed overnight due to over-the-top (OTT) streaming.” And all these films of his that failed at the box office and became complete commercial success – it was like complete depression. People were sad in our company. And with all the conviction that Uday stood with that the films would be released theatrically, we thought that there would be some divine intervention and that he would be rewarded for his conviction to release the films theatrically, and everything did not work out for us. Then came Pathan.
Yash Raj Films’ ‘Pathaan’, starring Shah Rukh Khan and Deepika Padukone, was the first major Hindi film to be a blockbuster in 2024 and ended the year as the second highest grosser. The top film, “Jawan”, also starring Khan, was distributed internationally by Yash Raj along with the No. 8 title “Dunki”, another film starring Khan.
Mukherjee was having a conversation with veteran journalist Rajeev Masand.