Anurag Kashyap Recalls His Gangs Of Wasseypur Getting Pulled Out Of Theatres In Just 9 Days Due To Salman Khan’s Ek Tha Tiger As He Exposes How Box Office Is Still Dominated By Star System
Anurag Kashyap says Gangs Of Wasseypur collected 26 crore in 9 days but was pulled from theatres to make way for Salman Khan's Ek Tha Tiger.
Anurag Kashyap Recalls His Gangs Of Wasseypur Getting Pulled Out Of Theatres In Just 9 Days Due To Salman Khan’s Ek Tha Tiger(Photo Credit –Imdb/Instagram)
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Anurag Kashyap is a filmmaker who has never shied away from dropping truth bombs, no matter how uncomfortable the statements might be. Be it calling out the unstructured fee system of the stars or superstars rejecting his films owing to the star cast. He now has opened up on the unequal distribution of theatres and blamed them for the deaths of small films.
Shah Rukh Khan’s Jawan is currently the talk of the town, and in the wake of this, two films have already stepped aside to make for King Khan. However, the reason for these films getting postponed has clearly not been mentioned.
Now, Anurag Kashyap has opened up on big films, being responsible for the untimely and sudden deaths of small films. He explained the phenomenon perfectly with the example of his film Gangs Of Wasseypur and revealed that the film’s Box Office was stung by a biggie like Salman Khan’s Ek Tha Tiger!
In a conversation with Indian Express, Anurag Kashyap revealed, “Today, people talk highly about Gangs of Wasseypur, but it was taken off cinemas in nine days because a big film like Ek Tha Tiger was coming. It wasn’t the decision of a star or a producer, and it was the decision of the theatres. If that film had done a business of Rs 26 cr in nine days, it would have done more if it got space. So the system is such, and we don’t even have enough cinemas.”
The filmmaker even revealed why he changed his streak of filmmaking owing to such unequal distribution, “I’ve chosen to make my kind of films in the atmosphere where I understand why it works and why it doesn’t. So the consequences are also mine, as long as I don’t lose money for others. That’s a lesson I’ve learnt, so I keep my budgets low.”
The director reopened the North Vs South debate while he compared the style of filmmaking business in the Hindi Film Industry and the others down south. Making a comparison between Hindi, Tamil & Malayalam films he said, “I think Hindi has a template. It is also heavily controlled by the trade, box office, star system. The latter is there even in the South but look at the Tamil film industry, they’ve given five hits with first time filmmakers and not with big stars. There’s a certain kind of equality. In Malayalam, they don’t do so many promotions, just straight up drop their films. In Tamil Nadu, everyone gets to promote with an equal amount, there’s a ceiling to it. But here, a big film’s promotion will dominate and a small film will disappear. Even theater owners don’t give space, but equal space is given there.”
The comparisons seem quite true since Gangs Of Wasseypur was having a smooth run at the Box Office till it disappeared. On the other hand, South Indian films have been dominating the Hindi Box Office as well for the past few years, until this year when Shah Rukh Khan’s Pathaan took over the baton, followed by Sunny Deol’s Gadar 2, Akshay Kumar & Pankaj Tripathi’s OMG 2, and now recently released Ayushmann Khurrana & Ananya Panday’s Dream Girl 2.
