‘To every Animal, there will be a Homebound’: Karan Johar defends making high-budget, mass cinema to pay for artistic work

In a chat shared on the YouTube channel of IIMUN, Karan said that when they make films that are meant to “shape generations” they don’t make as much money. He explained that this was a “double-edged sword” because a mainstream filmmaker has to balance commerce and art when making a movie. “We have to make sure that our work is also commercially viable while we want to be as artistic, as cinematic and of course, push the boundaries but if I give you a list of 10 movies that have done that, they have not done the numbers but movies that have catered to the generation with front-footed energy, great thumping music, high testosterone. Those are making hundreds of crores at the box office so where does that leave us?” he said.

Karan questioned, “Should we be shaping a generation or should we be catering to the generation? That’s the big question.” He then spoke about filmmakers like Neeraj Ghaywan who has a “deep amount of consciousness” and “doesn’t want to cater but wants to shape.” He said that filmmakers like Neeraj, Shazia Iqbal and Zoya Akhtar will “relentlessly” tell the stories that are intended to shape generations, without caring much for the commercial aspect of the movies.

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“To every Animal, there will be a Homebound. To every Dhadak 2, there will be a Dhurandhar. There will always be a balance,” he said and added, “To every solid conscious filmmaker there will be a mainstream voice and I think the two should co-exist.”

Talking about his own film, Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani, which was a mainstream film but touched upon socially conscious subjects as well, Karan said that in the same year, films like Animal, Gadar, Jawan and Pathaan were bigger hits. He said that to fund films like Homebound, he has to make other mainstream films that make as much money as the aforementioned films. “I need to make that money for my company so I can make many more Homebounds. So you see it’s a double-edged sword. The more money I make through high testosterone cinema, if at all you can call it that, that way I can make Homebound and not care about the profitability but make it really for society,” he said.

Homebound is yet to make it to the top 5 at the Best International Feature Film category at the Oscars. The top 5 wil be announced on January 22.