• Karan Johar is a prominent Bollywood director.
• He helmed hits like Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham.
• Karan Johar says Bollywood lacks courage to create innovative material.

Karan Johar is a prominent Bollywood director. He helmed hits like Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham. Recently, he stated his reservations about Bollywood and said the Hindi film business lacks the commitment to develop innovative content.

In a Galatta Plus roundtable, the ace filmmaker discussed Bollywood’s troubling trends. Johar added,  “I think the core issue is that we come from a mainstream industry in Hindi cinema, and that includes myself, which does not have one very strong quality that every other cinema on this panel has. That is conviction. We kind of always go with the flow. We had such an original voice in Salim-Javed in the 70s. We created a certain character and the concept of that angsty, angry hero was derived in other cinemas. Then, in the 80s, suddenly something happened and there came a host of remakes. That’s where the conviction loss started. We started remaking every film popular in Tamil and Telugu.”

Karan Johar says Bollywood lacks courage to create innovative material.
Karan stated, “In the 90s, there was one love story that stormed the nation–Hum Aapke Hain Koun. Everyone, including myself, decided to jump on that bandwagon of love, and Shah Rukh Khan was created. But we let go of all our roots in the 70s. Then Lagaan was nominated for an Oscar in 2001 and everybody started making those kinds of films. In 2010, Dabangg did well and we again started those commercial films. That’s the problem. We actually lack–and I say this more for myself than anyone else–we lack the spine and conviction. That’s what we need to get from all the other industries.”

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