Anurag Kashyap moved from screenwriter to director. While some of his films are extremely popular among the audience, his two-part film Gangs of Wasseypur created a stir among cinema lovers. But even though the core audience of his crime-thriller resided in the northern part of India, the entertainer was not released there by the ‘Dumb’ studio. In an interview, the director said that the production studio decided that their audience was just in cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Chandigarh and Hyderabad. read on!
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter India, Anurag Kashyap explained that Bollywood collectively ignored its core audience, which is why South filmmakers were able to enter through the gap. Sharing examples, he said that during Covid-19, he came to know that two of his films, Gangs of Wasseypur and Mukkabaaz, did not release in North India even though its core audience is there.
During a distribution meeting, he learned that the production studio had decided that their core audience was in Delhi, Mumbai, Chandigarh and Hyderabad. Therefore, his North Indian films were not released across North India. The producers exclaimed, “What idiots they are.”
He further said that a theater owner from Bihar was requesting the production house to release the film in his theatre. However, the pleas fell on deaf ears as the team did not want to incur the cost of a digital cinema package thinking it was not suitable for that market.
The actor-director further said that even though Bollywood makes Hindi films, it has ignored the Hindi film audience. Therefore, films from the South were able to enter through the gap and even with their dubbed films they were able to make money. “This guy took advantage,” said the Bombay Talkies director, who created a YouTube channel Goldmines, where he started picking up South films at cheaper rates, dubbed them and started catering to the Hindi audience. That, the trailer of South Indian film Pushpa 2 was released in Patna.
Meanwhile, on the work front, Anurag Kashyap was seen playing an important role in the Tamil language film Maharaja followed by Bad Cop.
Also read: Anurag Kashyap fumes at ‘entitled actors’, says he’s moving out of Mumbai and Hindi film industry; ‘I hate it…’
