Indian Feature films are genre starved and dying with most of their content having been hijacked by TV, mobile data phones, stand-up comedy and Hollywood. So, it would be silly not to be where the crowd is on the web, says filmmaker VIKRAM BHATT

In my career in the entertainment business, I have learned that the only thing that works here is instinct and the capacity to see the business a tad differently. That’s what made me see the year 2017 in a different light. To my mind, 2017 will go down as the watershed year in the world of entertainment. It was the year when Digital Content made its first foray into the Indian entertainment space and changed the landscape of storytelling forever.

To understand why digital has changed everything we must first understand the environment in which we are. That environment is the condition of the Indian entertainment industry today. Feature films, at large, are dying a slow death. It is much like the film negative itself that died slowly when digital technology came into being. No one could have ever imagined that the hundred-year reign of the film negative would come to an end.

Film giants like Kodak and Eastman Color scoffed at the warnings. Sadly, they do not exist today. However, the film camera makers Arriflex were cleverer than the rest and astute enough to see that change was imminent and designed the best digital camera in the market called the Alexa series. The only way to survive is to accept change because no one has been able to fight it.

So, why do I say that feature films are dyingIJ let me explain. Hollywood has slowly made inroads into the Indian space, with films being dubbed in every regional language. Slowly, these films have found acceptance. As a result, the big franchise films like Avengers, Batman, Fast And Furious and the kind have killed the local action film market. Indian filmmakers have stopped making action films because they can no longer afford them. They cannot compete with Hollywood.

Next in line is television which has taken away the family drama, the social film and the emotional drama from cinema.

Sex sold well at one time but is not able to guarantee ticket sales anymore. It is not that people don't like watching sex. It's just that they have a cheaper option. It's called the Jio Data plan that comes free of charge or for very little. Everyone has data and when you can see sex sirens in all their glory on your phone why buy a 200 rupees ticket and watch half-baked sex sirens in half their gloryIJ

Comedy did well for a time and then came the AIB and the TVFs of the world and made comedy an everyday presentation on YouTube.

The censors have blunted the films even more by their erratic behaviour.

So, if you look at the big picture, feature films have been left with very limited options in subject material, just the big romantic films or horror. Films are genre-starved for various platforms have usurped the genres.

The audiences, especially the youth, is hungry for content that they are not getting anywhere. let us understand that Indian television has left the Indian youth to fend for itself. They have nothing for them on Indian TV and everyone cannot afford the Netflix and Amazon subscription. The Internet is the only option for them.

I believe that this is the right time to get into making content for the Indian market that, thanks to the digital age, reaches the Indians all over the world. The advantage of the Internet is it is not country specific.

So this is the future of entertainment. The cell phone has become the first source of entertainment today. With India going 4G, the market is going berserk. There are millions of hand phones in India. Add to that the technology of mirroring the content from your phone to the television and the cell phone becomes the premier entertainment portal.

To sell your wares you have to be where the crowd is. Today it's on the web. It would silly not to be there!