Anurag Kashyap declares he is moving out of Mumbai because he is ‘disgusted’ by Hindi film industry: ‘I was ghosted by friends’

Kashyap emphasised how a film like Manjummel Boys would never be made in Hindi cinema but, if successful, would likely be remade in Hindi. “The mindset is to remake what’s already worked. They won’t try anything new,” he said.

He was particularly critical of agencies for fostering a damaging culture among budding actors. Kashyap explained, “The first-generation actors and the really entitled ones are very painful to deal with. Nobody wants to act—they all want to be stars. The agency won’t make anybody a star, but the moment someone becomes a star, the agency makes money off them. The onus of finding talent is on you—you have to take a risk and firefight with 50 people. And when the film is made, the agency grabs them and turns them into a star. They will brainwash them and tell them what they need to do to become a star. They won’t send them to workshops but to the gym—it’s all glam-glam because they have to be massive stars.”

Kashyap further accused agencies of creating a barrier between actors and filmmakers. He shared an incident about an actor who disappeared on the advice of his agency but later returned to him for career guidance after being dumped by the same agency. “This is what the agency does—they just make money off you. They aren’t invested in building new careers,” he said.

The filmmaker also expressed disappointment with actors he had previously considered friends. “My actors, whom I thought of as friends, ghost you because they want to be a certain way. That happens mostly here; it doesn’t happen in Malayalam cinema,” he added. Anurag recently made his acting debut in the Malayalam film Rifle Club, which also marked the acting debut of rapper Hanumankind.