Anurag Kashyap moved from being a screenwriter to being a director. While some of his are very popular among the audience, his two-part film Gangs of Wasseypur was a rage among cinema lovers. But even though the core audience of his crime-thriller resided in the northern part of India, the entertainer wasn’t released there by the ‘dumb’ studio. In an interview, the director stated that the production studio decided that his audience was just in cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Chandigarh, and Hyderabad. Read on!
While talking to The Hollywood Reporter India, Anurag Kashyap pointed out that Bollywood collectively ignored its core audience which is why South filmmakers were able to penetrate through the gaps. Sharing examples, he stated that during COVID-19 he found out that two of his films, Gangs of Wasseypur and Mukkabaaz, weren’t released in North India even though it has its core audience there.
During a distribution meeting, he learned that the production studio decided that his core audience was in Delhi, Mumbai, Chandigarh, and Hyderabad. Hence, his North Indian films weren’t released across North India. “That’s how dumb they are,” the makers exclaimed.
He further added that a theatre owner from Bihar was begging the production house to release the film in his theatre. However, the pleas fell on deaf ears as the team didn’t want to spend the Digital Cinema Package cost thinking it’s not worth for that market.
The actor-director continued that even though Bollywood makes Hindi films, it has ignored the Hindi film audience. Hence, South films were able to penetrate through the gaps and even with their dubbed movies, they were able to mint money. “The advantage was taken by this man who created the YouTube channel Goldmines where he started picking films from South at cheap rates, dubbed them, and started catering to that Hindi audience,” the Bombay Talkies director opined adding that the audience got built so much that, the trailer of the South Indian film, Pushpa 2 was released in Patna.
Meanwhile, on the work front, Anurag Kashyap was seen playing a key role in the Tamil language movie, Maharaja followed by Bad Cop.
