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Despite his recent films not working well at the box office, Anurag Kashyap remains one of the most influential filmmakers of contemporary Indian cinema. Known for his unconventional style and his tendency to nurture fresh talent, Kashyap has already left a lasting impact on the industry.
However, the director’s struggles with box office are no secret, and he himself has time and again addressed this. The filmmaker recently opened up about why he never attempted to make films with a big star like Shah Rukh Khan or Salman Khan. “Though I came here to make films, there was a time when I succumbed to it (the habit of chasing stars). Everybody was telling me, ‘Without stars you are doing this… imagine what you will do with stars’. That’s when the tide turns the other way and the slide starts,” he said during a chat with Puja Talwar.
Mentioning that with stars come expectations, Kashyap said that one can’t play around with their images and will have to cater to their fanbase. “I don’t know how to do that,” he added. “If you don’t cater to their fanbase while working with a star, they will cancel you. And, my film did get cancelled because I was making my own movie. I am not catering to anybody’s friends or fanbase,” Kashyap stated.
Kashyap pointed out that fans are fanatics in India. “There’s no such practice in other countries. So, there you have more freedom and actors also play around. We are driven by hero-worshipping here.”
Kashyap asserted that stars will remain stars even in the OTT era. “OTTs have just thrown open a space for OTT stars too and equalised the game. It ensured that good actors were getting better roles and better pay cheques. Now, a Pankaj Tripathi or a Nawazuddin Siddiqui can lead a film.”
Mentioning that stars like Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan can never ignore their fanbase, Kashyap said: “Even when they are experimenting or playing around, they think a lot because if their fanbases get upset, they react very strongly. They go after everyone. After Tubelight, Salman Khan fans went after director Kabir Khan.”
Recently, Kashyap spoke about how it was initially difficult for him to get his films to cinema halls, and once people got to see them legally or illegally, they questioned his ‘morality and character’.
On being told that most of his films were leaked on piracy websites, Anurag agreed. “That’s the story of my life,” he said on Cyrus Broacha’s podcast. The director also said that he earned one-eighth of what he should have earned because most of his films were pirated.
Kashyap is currently touring various film festivals with his neo-noir thriller film Kennedy, starring Rahul Bhat and Sunny Leone in the lead roles.
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