December 27, 2017
Filmmaker Rohit Shetty, who scored a hit with Reliance
Entertainment-backed "Golmaal Again" in a year which has seen Shah Rukh Khan and
Salman Khan's films fall flat at the box office, says a good commercial movie
will always work.
During a conversation on Saavn's "Take 2 with Anupama
and Rajeev", Shetty was asked if there was any sort of anxiety about the fact
that a chunk of commercial films were rejected in 2017 before "Judwaa 2" and
"Golmaal Again" came, read a statement.
Shetty said: "No... What has
happened is that just because you have a big star, you tag it as a commercial
film. I don't see 'Tubelight' as a commercial film. Whereas Salman Khan's 'Tiger
Zinda Hai' is a commercial film -- you can make out, there is action, there is
song and there is everything what a Salman Khan film should be like.
"And
I really admire and respect Kabir (Khan) for taking Salman Khan after Bajrangi
(Bhaijaan) and making a film like Tubelight. It didn't work, that's a different
story altogether but at least he was honest in what he was doing. So I don't see
Tubelight as a commercial film.
"I don't see 'Jab Harry Met Sejal' as an
out and out Shah Rukh Khan commercial film. So you can't call these two films
commercial. And other than that what happened this year was that a lot of people
took back-foot, 'Oh, commercial is not going to work', which is a wrong theory
altogether. A good commercial film will always work."
As for himself, he
says he doesn't know if there's a success formula.
"The kind of films I
make are for pan-India. There's a large segment of the audience which come and
see these kind of films, commercial films... I make commercial films keeping in
mind my audience which is largely family audience and mass audience and I try to
cater them every time. It's just going right all the time... That's all I can
say. I try to cater to a segment of audience which I know (would like my
cinema)."
He went wrong with "Dilwale".
"That is the first time in
my career that I went to cater the audience which is not mine, that's a Shah
Rukh-Kajol audience... We changed the whole film and that went wrong. So that
was a learning experience - to cater to an audience and not to shift that."
Shetty is himself a fan of director Rajkumar Hirani.
"I have a lot of
respect in my heart for him because I think he is the only director who can pull
off a commercial film with so much value and so much of message. He is the only
commercial director who can cater everyone. If you watch a Raju Hirani film, it
has everything. The class that Raju Hirani brings in is amazing.
"I think
he is the finest director we have in our country or in the world I would say,"
he said of Hirani, known for movies like the Munna Bhai series, "3 Idiots" and
"PK".
Talking about whether he feels angry that he doesn't get the
respect he deserves, Shetty said: "Earlier I used to, but now I know that it's
never going to happen ever in my life. But you know what, because of television,
I think I've calmed down. And when I say television, it's because people know
who Rohit Shetty is, you become a brand because of that and then you start
meeting people when you're travelling, you're at the airport, in the gym or
you're with your family at a mall or a restaurant.
"And then people start
loving you so much giving you so much love and respect. This is the reason now
I've mellowed down a lot. Just to make yourself sound intellectual you can't
bring a Rohit Shetty down. You can work hard and make your own space."
Shetty has been a part of reality TV show "Khatron Ke Khiladi" as host.