Actor Akshay Kumar has become one of the first Bollywood stars to address the high cost of movie outings in India. Speaking at an event, he admitted that the film industry needs to “dismantle” the existing system and “start all over again” if it wants to win the audience back. He emphasized the need to lower the cost of movie outings and said he would also want to lower his fees for that.
While speaking about Hindi films and why they have not been working at the box office in the last year or so, Akshay talked about what the industry is doing wrong. He said, “What is happening, as per me, is that things have changed. The audience wants something different. This is what we should think and try to give them that. It is our fault not the audience fault that they are not coming.”
He added, “We have to give them what they want. That is what we have to rethink. We have to dismantle what we have made and start all over again. Think what kind of cinema they would want to see. I want to start completely differently. And that is what I have started doing also. What has happened during the pandemic is that their choices have changed rapidly.”
He then addressed what the industry can do to bring down the cost of the movie outing. “There are so many other things that need to be done and not just by the actors but the producers and theatres as well. I’ll tell you I want to bring down my prices by 30-40%. Theatres need to understand that it’s recession time also. The audience has a limited amount of money to spend on entertainment. You cannot be spending so much on it. Everything has to change,” he said, adding, “And it’s not just the theatres. We have to work on the cost of actors, the cost of making the film. Everything needs to be addressed.”
