The mega Bollywood films are tanking at the box office, thanks to the ‘boycott Bollywood’ campaign
Hindi cinema aka Bollywood is having one of the biggest crises ever. Its mega-starrer movies are crashing at the box office. Despite the stardom of larger-than-life stars, its movies are unable to attract crowds to the theatre. This is worrisome for the industry which though unorganized employs lakhs of people and crores in revenue to the government. It is not of course the first time that Bollywood is facing a crisis which could be its undoing. It faced a similar crisis when television reached India's nook and corner and showed films from Bollywood, then came VCR in the eighties that again showed Bollywood movies but outside theatres. Then came the OTT. It survived them all. But the present crisis is different, it is not technical but intrinsic. Its films are on one hand losing the sheen of storytelling and on the other, there is a boycott Bollywood campaign run by the right wing which wants to kill the industry dominated by Muslim stars and has storylines which they feel are anti-Hindu and depict Hindu gods and their customs in an unsavory manner. They resort to social media and trend hashtags boycotting the new releases.
This of course not only hurts the film but the whole industry and spells hardships of lakhs of casual labourers working day and night on creating sets, providing logistics, lighting, operating cranes, and what have you. This is axing your own feet as right-wing BJP government is already under duress to provide jobs. Low collection means lesser films and lesser employment. Prime Minister Modi once said that casual employment is a big relief for the country, a person frying pakoras is indeed employed. So are the casual workers in the film industry. Though on a separate note it is high time for Bollywood to reinvent itself and come up with stories that are appealing and treatment of the story is such that is liked by today's generation and gets good critic ratings and claps in the cinema hall. It also needs to cut the flab and spends the budget judiciously so that the chances of recovery are better. It is not that people have lost interest in Indian cinema. South Indian cinema is doing pretty well and getting a very good response for its film like 'KGF-2', 'Pusha', dubbed in Hindi. Bollywood needs to understand the change in people's taste and and make films that would be to their liking and then no boycott campaign would work.