Filmmaker Anubhav Sinha has voiced strong criticism regarding the entertainment industry’s excessive focus on the business and box office performance of films, arguing that this obsession distracts from the actual purpose of cinema: the audience experience.
Sinha claims that the financial metrics being discussed are often unreliable and misleading. “The numbers are about what budget films are made on and the business they do. Dono ankdey jhoote hain! (Both figures are fake!),” the director stated emphatically.
He explained that while people in the industry generally avoid discussing this convoluted truth, “a lot of it isn’t true.”
Sinha believes that the audience should be entirely removed from financial discussions, which he feels are irrelevant to their role as consumers.
“Honestly, that is not the audience’s business; it should be whether they liked the movie or not,” he asserted. He drew a compelling analogy to consumer goods: “Do we ask a biscuit company about their ROI (return on investment) before consuming it?”
The director suggested that the public, and by extension the media, enjoys talking about failure too much. “We are discussing too much, and people talk and enjoy discussing failures. As humans, we like celebrating ruins and talking about them.” He stressed that while a film may be broadly labelled “bad,” the individual who saw it may have genuinely enjoyed it.
Facing Industry Challenges and Finding the Audience Gap
Sinha, who recently wrapped up a courtroom drama starring Taapsee Pannu, admitted that the film industry presents significant, even devastating, challenges for creators.
He confessed to facing a major professional hurdle after his 2011 film Ra.One underperformed commercially. “Logon ke ghar bik jaate hain (People lose their homes). Today, people call Ra.One a cult film, but it did not do well. After that I had a very tough three or four years with no work,” the 60-year-old filmmaker revealed.
Feeling the need to “reinvent and update” himself, Anubhav Sinha embarked on a journey he called “Chal Picture Chalein,” travelling across cities including Lucknow, Delhi, and Jaipur.
His travels highlighted a significant disconnect between filmmakers and their audience. He concluded that the audience is not boycotting theatres altogether, but they are highly selective. “The audience is willing to go to theatres, but they’re particular about what they choose to watch. If they feel a film is worth spending money and time on, they do watch it,” he observed.
Anubhav Sinha attributes this gap to the geographical reality of many in the film industry. “Most makers are immigrants in Mumbai, uprooted from our hometowns,” he shared. He argues that by living in this “bubble,” filmmakers are failing to witness and understand the changing tastes and evolving expectations of audiences in other parts of the country. His travels were an attempt to bridge this critical gap and reconnect with the real pulse of the nation’s movie-goers.