Suniel Shetty shares his opinions on the failure of films at box office

Suniel Shetty, who was among the most popular faces of Bollywood in the 1990s, recently reflected upon the failure of Hindi movies to bring audiences to cinema halls. He asserted that no matter how much the audience loves you, they will never pay for anything that is ‘trash’. The actor also said that people in the filmmaking business need to understand how the economics of a film work because they cannot spend more than half of their budget on celebrity fees instead of spending money on making the film better.

In a recent interview, Shetty said whenever he receives a tremendous amount of love from his fans, it makes his kids wonder why he stopped doing movies.

“I tell them because I made mistakes. I had an audience, but it was not willing to pay for the trash I was giving them. I learnt then that the audience will never pay for the trash you are churning out. That’s why we are going through what we are,” the 61-year-old actor said during an interview with an entertainment news portal.

The ‘Hera Pheri’ star said today, the need of the hour is to focus on content and storytelling.

“We need to go back to the drawing board and understand how economics work. A product can’t be top-heavy with the celebrity fee. For a Rs 100 product, you cannot pay Rs 80 as a fee and spend Rs 20 on the product, which means it’s lopsided, wrong and the foundation is weak, that’s why we are going wrong.”

Suniel, who was last seen in the web series ‘Dharavi Bank’, shared how earlier the distributors and the audience had a say in what they wanted to watch. He remembered how no film that didn’t have him doing the action was ever bought by the distributors.

“Anything that had Suniel Shetty not doing action never sold because distributors didn’t buy the film. The distributors used to see rushes and demand a couple of action scenes and a rain dance song. Then, distributors and audiences used to have a say. Today, there is a complete disconnect. Today, producers are only distributors and they do not understand what the audience wants. When 70 percent of India is mass, you are giving them a subject that is on Mars and not masses. There is no connection,” he said.