Bollywood is going through a crisis, says Karan Johar

Karan Johar recently spoke about the filmmaker’s dilemma of having to chose from a limited set of actors who are commercially saleable and how audiences need to start accepting newer actors to solve the ‘crisis’.

During the launch of digital portal Talent Next, Karan was asked about the limited number of ‘stars’ filmmakers can work with in Bollywood. To which, he replied, “Yes, big problem. 100 movies to make and six of them only that can sell your movie, suddenly you take anyone else and they say ‘you won’t get the budget otherwise, then the music won’t sell, overseas won’t sell, satellite won’t sell, digital won’t sell, nothing sells then.”

“We’re going through a crisis. There really are those many actors who are in trade parlance are viable, saleable. It is very limiting, we have very few movie stars and I hope the country starts loving more and more stars very soon. And gives them longevity as movie stars so that we can actually have the choice.The way that we used to love our movie stars up to the 1980s that madness and insanity is definitely depleting with time.” he added.

During the initial stage of Karan’s career, he primarily worked with veteran and established actors like Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan, Hrithik Roshan, Kajol, Rani Mukerji, Kareena Kapoor etc. But, the notion that he could only deliver hit films with established actors changed when he made ‘Student Of The Year’ with newcomers Alia Bhatt, Varun Dhawan and Sidharth Malhotra.

“When I was making ‘Student Of The Year’, I used to feel very sad on the set, there was no star on that set ever… We definitely have to launch faces, we make films with big budgets, we have to sell them. We are producers at the end of the day. I’m not a corporate studio, I’m not funded internationally, I don’t have that pool of wealth lying to take that chance with, I need to have a selling face, then work around it. When I made ‘Student Of The Year’, it was a chance I took, fortunately things worked out but it doesn’t work like that always,” he remarked.

Karan next film stars Ranbir Kapoor, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan And Anushka Sharma.