Filmmaker, and producer Karan Johar, who is openly criticised for launching star kids, and promoting nepotism in Bollywood stated that today, if he will launch a new boy or a new girl, then no one would turn up to watch the film. Recently, the Brahmastra producer was a part of a Roundtable discussion of Galatta Plus with Anurag Kashyap, Srinidhi Shetty, Varun Dhawan, Dulquer Salaam, and others.
While discussing the budget difference between South and Bollywood, Kashyap stated that regional movies have much more controlled marketing strategies. Even Karan agreed to it and said that even the costs are lower in the South. According to the filmmaker, they don’t have separate marketing costs like Bollywood have. "Today if I want to launch a new talent, a new boy or girl, nobody is going to watch that film," Karan added. He further explained that because they have to promote that film so much that, they will fail to recover personal networking agency costs. "So the way the marketing goes in other languages, Hindi is ridiculous,” asserted Johar.
Karan even mocked the marketing strategies of visiting malls, and promoting films on reality shows, and added, "Our PNA costs are pointless. They are not serving anybody. By going around in reality shows and visiting malls and going ‘wow 8000 people show up’. But 80 don’t reach the theatre." Karan asserted.
In the same conversation, Karan stated that Bollywood lacks spine and conviction, "I think the core issue is that we come from a mainstream industry in Hindi cinema, and that includes myself, which does not have one very strong quality that every other cinema on this panel has. That is conviction. We kind of always goes 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." Karan added.
