Anurag Kashyap opens up about his comments on Kantara and Pushpa, says pan-India term created for business, not cinema: ‘For every hit KGF, there’s a Kabzaa’

In an interview with Zoom, Anurag Kashyap was asked about it and how he looks at his comment being misinterpreted. The director said he doesn’t need to have his answers validated “today, tomorrow or day after”. The filmmaker said the term “pan-India” was coined purely for business purposes, with only a limited people benefiting from it.

“I have said something that I feel. In time, either people will see what I was trying to say or I will see that I was wrong. I have seen examples. Each pan-India film that has worked, it never set out to be pan-India. When KGF one was out, it wasn’t called a pan-India film. It was dubbed in Hindi and released by Excel Entertainment. Baahubali wasn’t called that either, it was dubbed and released. Pan-India term was created for the sake of business, not for cinema.

“Who is benefiting from it? Very few people. By saying pan-India they are getting higher budgets, some people are getting higher salaries, but the cost that is going into the film…Pan-India becomes enough for them to say it is a ‘big shot’ film, without any central core of the story.”

Anurag Kashyap said while Yash-fronted KGF films were monstrous hits, the same cannot be said of other projects which were also riding on the same narrative but fizzled at the box office, including Kannada period actioner Kabzaa starring Upendra, Shivarajkumar, Kiccha Sudeepa among others.

“For one pan-India hit film, for one hit of KGF, how many Kabzaa’s are there? Or other films that came out with high budgets, same shots, similar kind of things, with everything repeated. Compare the money that a hit film has made and the losses the other film has made. When you weigh them, you realise the industry has lost money. Similarly in Telugu and everywhere else. So I am very scared of these trends which start.”

The director said pan-India film is anyway not a “recent phenomenon”. Kashyap said films like Jeet Humari, Pratibandh, Aaj Ka Gunda Raj among others catered to Hindi audiences as well.

“It started with Kamal Haasan and Rajinikanth and then slowly it went on to Mani Ratnam and Shankar. We have seen that happen, but every time it has happened, it has happened for sometime. There was Pratibandh, Aaj Ka Gunda Raj, but after that we didn’t see Chiranjeevi in a Hindi film. There are expectations, some films benefit from it but after that it goes down. Because nobody is working on the script and the story that they should work on, there are very few filmmakers who are doing that,” he added.

After a rather dull 2022, Hindi films are back at the box office with hits like Pathaan, Zara Hatke Zara Bachke, Satyaprem Ki Katha, Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani, OMG 2, Gadar 2 and Dream Girl 2. All eyes are on Shah Rukh Khan fronted Jawan, which will have a wide release in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu.