• Anurag Kashyap says B-town failure has been due to its propensity to join popular trends.
• The director claimed that the bandwagon was to blame for Bollywood “killing itself.”
• Anurag has criticized the Hindi cinema industry for lack of innovation.

Bollywood’s recent failure, according to Anurag Kashyap, has been due to its propensity to join popular trends. In a recent conversation, the director used the pan-Indian film craze as an example and claimed that the bandwagon was to blame for Bollywood “killing itself.” Anurag has criticised the Hindi cinema industry for what he claims to be its lack of innovation.

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Dobaaraa, Anurag’s final film under his direction, was presented in theatres this year. The Taapsee Pannu-led film received mixed reviews from critics but was a commercial flop. Anurag had directed the Netflix movie Choked, which came out in 2020.

Anurag stated in a roundtable discussion where he told filmmaker Nagraj Manjule that his movie Sairat “destroyed” Marathi cinema. “I was talking to Nagraj and I told him Sairat destroyed Marathi cinema, the success of Sairat. Because suddenly people realised there is a possibility to make so much money so they stopped making those films. Everybody wanted to emulate Sairat,” he said. The most successful Marathi movie ever made is Sairat, which came out in 2016.

Anurag continued, saying that the desire for national blockbusters has now had a similar effect on Bollywood. “With pan-India, what is happening right now is that everybody is trying to make a pan-India film. Success will be 5-10%. Films like Kantara and Pushpa give you courage to go out and tell your stories. But KGF 2, however big the success, when you try and emulate that and set a project up, that’s when you start heading towards disaster. That’s the bandwagon that Bollywood destroyed itself on. You have to find films that give you courage,” he said.

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After the popularity of SS Rajamouli’s Baahubali franchise, the first of which was released in 2015, the phrase “pan-India films” started to be used. A number of pan-Indian blockbusters, including KGF: Chapter 2 and RRR, two of all-highest-grossing time’s Indian movies, were released in 2022. In addition to them, Ponniyin Selvan: I, Kantara, Vikram, and Shiva from Brahmastra Part One all enjoyed financial success in India.