“How Varun Dhawan’s Judwaa 2 Managed To Do Such A Huge Business?”: Subrat Dutta

Umesh Punwani of KoiMoi had a conversation with Subrat Dutta about his web series Byomkesh, current scenario of Bollywood and much more. Here are the excerpts:

Subrat Dutta, tell us something about your presence in Byomkesh the web series?
I am playing Byomkesh‘s close friend, Ajit, in the series. I am the one through which people gets to know what’s cooking in the mind of Byomkesh. He discusses the things with me helping the audience to get know what’s happening. So, Ajit is always there to highlight the main protagonist, Byomkesh. 2 episodes for the same have been shot. 1st was aired on 14th October and 2nd will release on 21st October on Hoichoi Originals. We will shoot for the 3rd episode probably by 1st or 2nd week of November.

What do you think about the content ruling in Bollywood?
2017 is the year from which people are majorly focusing on content, let it be the big feature or short film. There are 52 weeks in a year and so many movie releases with so many stars, where is the space for small movies? I feel the web series platform is the best one to telecast such films. For example, even if a web series does not garner much buzz in the start, it can always do good once it gets famous through the word of mouth helping the producers earning a decent amount of returns. If there is a group of 20 Bengali men in Australia, it would not have been possible to telecast a show of Byomkesh especially for them but web-series made this possible. When Rajinikanth’s film releases down south, Producers of the film send a van in the remote areas of the village. They show the film to the villagers, in the areas where still it’s not possible to build a theatre. That’s why Rajinikanth’s movie does such a huge business. We still are 3500-4000 screens short in India theatre-wise.

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How has been Bollywood for you? Because your last clear image in my mind is that hilarious director you played in Akshay Kumar’s The Shaukeens.
Bollywood has been amazing for me. But my friend Adil Rizwi who has produced movies like Roar: Tigers Of The Sundarbans and T For Tajmahal, he lost his life in Syria attacks last year. After he left my couple of films were left incomplete. This was kind of a personal shock for me. My last film Sameer got very good reviews. I have films like 3 Smoking Barrels and T For Taj Mahal releasing very soon.

Who has been your inspiration in acting?
I am a big fan of Daniel Day-Lewis. I still wonder how that guy could be so perfect. He could do My Left Foot as well as Lincoln. He is retiring also. He once was denied by saying you can’t do anything in Royal Shakespeare Company. In Bollywood too, things are changing where movies like Hindi Medium and Newton works. There was a Mahesh Bhatt phase when makers used to think horror movies would work, it’s not there anymore. Quality of acting has developed with time too. I don’t want to name anyone but there are actors who used to do monotonous roles in their every film. Actors like us, who does not have six packs but have acting packed in us, got benefitted from this. I loved Padmavati‘s trailer too, Ranveer Singh is looking great. Rajkummar Rao’s Newton has created a new genre for Bollywood. It has encouraged the makers who before were afraid to invest in small films like these. This year many movies proved that you can make profitable films with good content. Though I am a little bit worried how Judwaa 2 managed to do such huge business which means we still have such audiences. The movie with mass appeal Baadshaho did not work but Judwaa 2 worked because of the youth connect. Movies like Judwaa 2 come with short shelf life. Movies like A Wednesday profited more by selling DVDs than its theatrical business. The phase of horror movies & Emraan Hashmi type movies is over now. Aksar 2, Julie 2 – movies like these will not work.