Suniel Shetty reflects upon failure of films at box office: ‘Audience will never pay for the trash you are churning out’

The Hera Pheri star said today the need of the hour is to focus on content and storytelling. He also suggested, “We need to go back to the drawing board and understand how economics work. A product can’t be top-heavy with the celebrity fee. For a Rs 100 product, you cannot pay Rs 80 as fee and spend Rs 20 on the product, which means it’s lopsided, it’s wrong, and the foundation is weak, that’s why we are going wrong.”

Suniel Shetty, who was last seen in the web series Dharavi Bank, shared how earlier the distributors and the audience had a say in what they wanted to watch. He remembered how any film which didn’t have him doing action was never bought by the distributors.

He said, “Anything which had Suniel Shetty not doing action never sold because distributors didn’t buy the film. The distributors used to see rushes and demand a couple of action scenes and a rain dance song. Then, distributors and audiences used to have a say. Today, there is a complete disconnect. Today, producers only are distributors and they do not understand what the audience wants. When 70% of India is mass, you are giving them a subject which is in Mars and not mass. There is no connect.”

Also, as per the actor the major difference between now and when he entered the film industry in the 90s was that actors were not judged so much. He said, “We weren’t judged as much as we are judged today. It’s too judgemental today. When I did my debut film, Arzoo, it got shelved. But luckily the word of mouth about my action was good, so I signed other films. If it had happened today, I would have been destroyed. I would have received backlash on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.”

Suniel Shetty has Hera Pheri 3 and Project K in the pipeline.