Filmmaker Karan Johar has now criticized Bollywood’s inability to make original content and even criticized himself as a part of the industry. Opening up about the same, the filmmaker said that the Hindi film industry lacks the spine and doesn’t have the conviction to try original things. He also said that the film industry has started remaking every popular film in Tamil and Telugu.
Speaking at a roundtable interaction organized by Galatta Plus, Karan Johar shared that Bollywood has a herd mentality about genres including himself. “After Hum Aapke Hain Koun, everyone, including myself, decided to jump on the bandwagon of love, and Shah Rukh Khan was created. We let go of all our roots from the 70s, and in 2001 when Lagaan was nominated for an Academy Award, we were like, ‘Oh, now we’ll do these kind of films’ right up till the 2010s. My Name is Khan is still a root of Lagaan, in my head, which released alongside Dabangg, which again (changed trends) and people were like, ‘Now let’s start making commercial films again’. That’s the problem, we actually lack the spine and lack the conviction,” KJo quoted.
He further added that they as filmmakers always go with the flow. We had such an original voice in Salim-Javed in the 70s. We created a certain character and the concept of that angsty, angry hero was derived in other cinemas. “Then, in the 80s, suddenly something happened and there came a host of remakes. That’s where the conviction loss started. We started remaking every film popular in Tamil and Telugu.”