Sanjay Dutt says South Indian films are wreaking havoc in Bollywood, believes slice-of-life films don’t cater to 90% of the audience

Actor Sanjay Dutt rued that ‘heroism’ in Hindi films has been sidelined in favour of slice-of-life movies. “We need to start believing in our cinema, which we’ve forgotten,” the actor said in an interview, saying that ideally, confident producers should also dribute their own films.
Speaking with Zoom on the sidelines of the release of his latest film, KGF: Chapter 2, Sanjay Dutt said that the reason South Indian films are working at the box office and Hindi films aren’t is that Bollywood isn’t catering to tier 2 and tier 3 centres anymore.

He said, “Why have we forgotten heroism in our industry? The South has always believed in heroism, they’ve always made films according to that, they’ve always considered the hero as larger than life. I’ve grown up seeing Amit ji doing that, Dharam ji doing that. We did that when we were introduced. And suddenly, it’s gone out of the window.”
He continued, “If you look at South films like RRR or Pushpa or KGF, these films are creating havoc all over India. I’m not saying slice-of-life is bad; whatever, it’s good. But those films are not catering to India. Why are we forgetting Bihar, UP, Jharkhand, Orissa, Rajasthan, MP? This is 90% of our audience, they’re hungry to see our movies.” He said that he has travelled in these states and fans there ask him why he doesn’t play the sort of characters that he used to. He said that one person even asked him why he did Bhoomi, and folded his hands in one scene. Sanjay Dutt said that the fan wanted him to destroy the courtroom with his bare hands in that film, because that’s what they expect of him.

He said that going forward, he will make it a point only to do mass films. Sanjay concluded saying that as a producer now, he hopes to approach Salman Khan with a ‘mass’ film. He said that even Ranveer Singh and Ranbir Kapoor are capable of pulling off such films, but they need to be ‘open’ to doing them.