Allow Films To Breathe - Akshay Kumar

I personally feel anybody giving reviews should have knowledge about filmmaking and he should not be seeing the film in a trial show or a premiere.

A reviewer should always write about the film only when he watches it with the actual paying audience because your notions will change when you are watching the film with the audience rather than watching the film at a premiere or a trial show. Trial shows and premieres are artificial environments where most people are either pretending to love the film more than they really do, or hate it more than they really do. Go watch a film with the actual audience and review the film according to the reactions of the common man. I think you will be true to a film when you do that.

And I would like to strongly recommend that reviews should be made public on Monday. Let the movie breathe on its own for the first weekend. Many film industries abroad follow that pattern, and even the South industry follows the same system. I don't know how the South industry manages it - whether it's due to star power or producers' unity - but thanks to their efforts, even though their industry has a much smaller market compared to Hindi films, they still gives stiff competition to our industry which caters to a much wider market.

I don't know how far it is possible in our industry considering that there will never be any unity within the fraternity, but if we do impose the Review On Monday' rule, then it will benefit the entire industry.

Let me tell you about an instance I have experienced firsthand. Someone had come to visit me on the sets of a film and we were sitting in my vanity van. It so happened that at that time, the TV was on and there was a program going on where this reviewer (I have no clue who this guy was) was giving an extremely discourteous review of some film that had been released that day. I saw my guest making a discrete call to his wife telling her that the film his family had booked to watch that evening was getting very bad reviews so let's not watch the film and rather go have a family dinner instead.

Us admi ne baithe baithe 8 tickets cancel kara di. Bhai, tera kya ja raha hain aur bhai tu hain kaun? TuSubhash Ghai hain? Jo tu bol raha hai aur review de raha hain, tu ne kya banaya hain aaj tak? See if Sehwag doesn't play well, who are the people who criticise and analyse him? Someone like a Sunil Gavaskar or a Ravi Shastri who have themselves played the game at the highest levels and understand the nitty-gritties and are therefore qualified to comment on someone's performance. Not some Bunty who has just got out of school and starts giving his so-called expert' gyaan! Yet the same Bunty who has nothing to do with the film industry, knows nothing about films, feels free to comment on films and influence people to cancel tickets!

But what can we do? Neither are we united as an industry, nor do we stand up and raise our voices on issues that affect us all. Mark my words, if we could somehow ensure that there were no reviews till Monday, it would change the business drastically. I can give it to you in writing that it would increase collection by 15 to 20 per cent at least.

And where would that increased money go? To the industry itself. If we are making 180 films a year now, we will be able to make 240. The industry will expand and many more people will be able to earn their livelihood through films. This office (Box Office India) will expand as you will have to hire more people because there will be more films to write about.

It is unfortunate that no one understands this. As you know, we are an industry where many people feel happy at the failure of others. But we don't understand that the failure of other people and their films is also a failure of the industry and ultimately affects us all.