Aamir Khan: India’s movie legend on a cut-price mission to save Bollywood | Bollywood

About ten years in the past, Aamir Khan grew to become troubled. Regardless of being considered one of Bollywood’s most bankable superstars for greater than three many years, he realised that solely tiny numbers of Indians have been watching him on the large display screen.Indian cinema is extensively adored and has an outsized affect on society however simply 2-3% of its 1.4 billion folks go to the cinema.One longstanding downside is entry, particularly in rural areas. Khan, who has starred in, directed and produced celebrated movies together with Lagaan, 3 Idiots and Taare Zameen Par, spent years making an attempt to develop a plan to construct 1000’s of low-cost cinemas in India’s rural hinterland the place movies might be beamed in by way of satellite tv for pc. Nevertheless, the initiative was stymied by relentless paperwork.Price, too, has develop into an enormous impediment. Previously, going to the cinema was a vibrant, typically rowdy communal affair, the place households would pack out single-screen cinemas amid cheering, dancing and whistling, with tickets costing only a few rupees. However as multiplexes have come to dominate in India, it has develop into a luxurious expertise. Tickets now often price upwards of 500 rupees (£4.30) – unaffordable to most households in India.Aamir Khan and Gracy Singh in Lagaan (As soon as Upon a Time in India), 2001. {Photograph}: AJ Pics/Alamy“When my first movie got here out the cinema tickets have been 10 rupees and entire households from all courses might afford to come back [and] pack out cinema halls,” stated Khan, 60. “However the actuality is that theatres are not a mass medium, it’s develop into an upper-class medium. And as film-makers, we haven’t completed sufficient to vary that and attain that different 97% of the inhabitants.”As a substitute, he stated folks had discovered different methods to look at movies: both ready for them to come back on to satellite tv for pc tv or watching grainy pirated variations on their telephones.This week, nonetheless, Khan introduced what he promised could be the answer – or what he described because the “future for Indian cinema”. After a conventional cinematic run, his newest launch, Sitaare Zameen Par (Stars on Earth), will likely be made obtainable for audiences completely on YouTube for simply 100 rupees, the equal of lower than £1. Different movies in his again catalogue and future releases will observe.His alternative of YouTube, recognized extra as a spot to look at trailers than full films, was deliberate. Of all leisure platforms, YouTube’s attain in India – with 491 million customers – far outstretches different conventional streaming providers equivalent to Netflix, which has about 12 million subscribers in India. It was, stated Khan, “an absolute no-brainer when you think about the attain it has”.“Web penetration in India is now large so that you don’t want bodily theatres to achieve an viewers any extra,” Khan stated. “I consider that is the mannequin that may attain out to the utmost variety of folks and likewise serve the movie trade’s artistic neighborhood. In fact, the primary place for our movies ought to at all times be theatres. However then they need to be obtainable to the majority of the nation at an reasonably priced worth.”Khan stated he would at all times choose folks to look at his movies on the large display screen however the actuality was that theatres weren’t catering to the viewers he needed to achieve.He stated: “The concept with that is that 100 rupees could be paid by a complete household to look at the movie collectively, perhaps with their neighbours as effectively, so the associated fee per head could be very low.”Aamir Khan with Gunjan Soni, the managing director of YouTube India. {Photograph}: Divyakant Solanki/EPAKhan’s resolution to supply another can also be a response to the detrimental position he believes streaming has performed within the disaster being confronted by Indian cinema.skip previous publication promotionTake a entrance seat on the cinema with our weekly e-mail stuffed with all the most recent information and all of the film motion that mattersPrivacy Discover: Newsletters might include information about charities, on-line advertisements, and content material funded by exterior events. For extra info see our Privateness Coverage. We use Google reCaptcha to guard our web site and the Google Privateness Coverage and Phrases of Service apply.after publication promotionRather than boosting audiences, streaming had proved “counterproductive” and had led to the “cannibalisation” of Indian cinema, the place movies barely had an opportunity to be seen at theatres earlier than they grew to become absorbed on a platform alongside hundreds of thousands of others.“Proper now I really feel that cinema goes by means of a tough time and I’m doing what I can to place again life into it,” stated Khan.The trade’s turmoil has not been restricted to a flailing field workplace. Over the previous decade, since right-wing Hindu nationalist politics have come to dominate India, film-makers have accused India’s movie censors of being draconian and blocking something politically contentious.Bollywood’s largest male stars – Khan, Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan, sometimes called the “trinity of Khans” – are all Muslim and have been focused by nationalists, who’ve mobilised hate campaigns and boycotts of their movies and accused them of being “anti-India”. Khan continues to be haunted by feedback he made a decade in the past, stating that he felt unsafe amid “rising intolerance”, which prompted protests.Khan acknowledged that many within the trade felt their artistic instincts have been being curbed by folks in positions of energy who know little or no about mass communication. “They really feel they don’t have the liberty to say issues the best way they wish to and the way they wish to,” he stated.However Khan stated censorship and different pressures confronted by Indian cinema have been nothing new and dated again to the Nineteen Forties. “Each society has a sure proportion of people who find themselves adverse of their outlook and that isn’t going to vanish.”Regardless of entertaining ideas of retirement – in addition to a quick interval throughout the pandemic when he “secretly retired for six months” – Khan stated he remained excited by the probabilities of cinema in India. “I’m actually hopeful this new mannequin will work,” he stated. “If it doesn’t, we’re all in bother.”