Saif Ali Khan is one actor who speaks openly about most issues. We recently met him for an event and the actor spoke about how the Indian market will soon be growing by many thousand crores. He also expressed his reservations regarding actors personally promoting their own films.
“The promotional strategies formed require us to go ahead on different platforms and say, ‘My film is good. Please come and watch.’ Why would people trust us? Audiences are not stupid to agree with us, while we are blowing our own trumpets. Interactions with media persons are different.”
The actor adds, “Having said that, I do agree that certain platforms are good enough to raise awareness though. In the earlier days, by just looking at the trailer people would decide whether they wanted to watch the film or not. People can’t rely on the actors. So sometimes, I do feel it’s just a waste of time.”
Talking about the recent distribution of Indian films in China, the actor feels good cinema is one thing that is liked by every country and its people. “No one would like to watch regressive cinema. We all need to feel happy, as the Indian market has become huge. There are new territories opening up, and people worldwide have started liking our films. Those days are not far when our films will fetch multi-crores from these newly opened territories too. It’s time for us to better our distribution worldwide,” he says.
Specifically mentioning countries, like Iran, Morocco, etc. he says, “People in these countries have a different culture though. Every story needs to be balanced. Stories with good content will run in cinema halls. People may be able to relate to their own life experiences, while watching real stories on celluloid.”
And despite the content and promotional activities, when asked about films bombing at the box office, Saif says, “Certain good films do not fare well at the box office merely because of a lack of proper advertising. They need to come up with better merchandising ideas to promote films. The merchandising samples sometimes are not good enough to draw people into theatres.”
