Vivek Agnihotri Asks 'Is Bollywood Blind, Deaf, Dumb' for Not 'Learning' From Small Budget Films

Filmmaker and director Vivek Agnihotri, who rose to global fame after the success of his film The Kashmir Files, heavily criticized Bollywood for not learning from the massive box-office success of his film, along with films such as Kantara, Karthikeya 2, and Rocketry: The Nambi Effect. The 48-year-old took to the micro-blogging platform Twitter to share his opinions on the Hindi film industry and called out their inability to understand “simple maths" and their refusal to “learn" from storylines that appeal to people and create a mark at the box office.

Agnihotri took to Twitter to explain that films can do commercially well even without a huge budget spent on making them. Additionally, he even went on to inquire if Bollywood is also “blind, deaf and dumb" to not decrease the production costs of movies. Take a look at the tweet here.

The filmmaker mentioned films such as The Kashmir Files and the Kannada film Kantara due to their rather small budgets of approximately Rs 15 crore, which then went on to be massive box-office successes. The year 2022 has seen quite a few big-budget Bollywood films take a dive at the box office, while several others have done relatively well.

In his tweet, Agnihotri wrote, “4 small films with no stars, no marketing or distribution support The Kashmir Files, Kartikeya 2, Kantara and Rocketry earned approximately 800 crores at the Box Office. The total cost of production of 4 films is under 75 crores. Is Bollywood blind, deaf, and dumb that they don’t understand simple maths and learn?"

Reacting to Vivek’s tweet, many viewers said that Bollywood was unable to unlearn old habits, while several others pointed out that the films Agnihotri mentioned did somewhat have a star presence. While The Kashmir Files starred veteran actor Anupam Kher, Karthikeya 2 starred Nikhil Siddhartha, and Kantara (which is still running in theatres) starred Rishab Shetty. Rocketry is touted to have made Rs 50 crore on a reported Rs 25-crore budget, and also starred actor R. Madhavan.

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In a similar vein, a Twitter user commented: “Rishab is a star, Madhavan is a star, Siddharth is a star but content was the King that's it", while a second user commented: “With due respect sir, pls refrain from saying “no stars" movie. R Madhavan, Rishab Shetty, and Nikhil are our stars. Don't hurt our sentiments if you're unsure about their popularity down south. Thanks for recognizing the real talent." along with a folded hands emoji. A third user said: “Big insult to people like Anupam Kher, R Madhavan, Mithun Chakraborty, and others… What's the definition of stars here?" Agreeing with the filmmaker, one wrote, “Bollywood is living in some other world. They think they are still relevant. Regional cinema and independent movies are here and they are going to stay!"

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