Pathaan director Siddharth Anand reacts to film being called ‘pale imitation’ of Hollywood, claims he hasn’t seen more than two MCU movies

Asked if he’s worried that his films will be called ‘paler imitations of Hollywood films’, Siddharth said, “That’s inevitable, when you make a film that’s beyond the conventions of Bollywood films. You’re instantly compared to Hollywood, which obviously has better infrastructure, better technology, and huger budgets. It will always seem like we’re trying to imitate that, but our limitations are much more. We also have ambitions, our directors have the ability to mount films, but we’re limited by reach because our films are made in one language, which is Hindi. Our revenues are directly proportional to the budgets we can afford.”

Siddharth also addressed specific comparisons to the MCU films, and said, “I have to admit, I haven’t watched more than two MCU films. I’m not a fan of that genre. I’ve seen a couple of them. My son is a huge fan, and he’s an encyclopedia. He briefs me and keeps me up to date. I have to run my scripts and my sequences past him, and he’ll say, ‘No, dad, this is in that film. No, you can’t do this, this has already been done.’ I’m like, ‘What the hell do I do?’ So, I take ideas from him on how to manoeuvre things around. I think I should get on the bandwagon and start watching those films, so that there’s no overlap.”

Pathaan has been demolishing records at the box office ever since its release last week. The film has made around Rs 350 crore domestically, and more than Rs 635 crore worldwide, emerging as the biggest Bollywood hit of the pandemic era, the biggest film of Shah Rukh Khan’s career, and the biggest Hindi film since Siddharth’s own War, in 2019.