Bollywood is currently going through a crisis that's evident to all, filmmakers and audiences alike. Many production houses and actors have been making one miscalculation after another, and filmmakers like Anurag Kashyap have strongly spoken about this in interviews.
Actor Aamir Khan and Javed Akhtar discussed this during a press interaction held at a special film festival commemorating Khan's work called 'Aamir Khan: Cinema Ka Jadugar' in which Javed Akhtar was the moderator.
Among the many reasons that the two brought up for the failure of most Hindi films today is that they don't opt for "broader strokes" in storytelling, which, Aamir feels, is one of the notable qualities of successful South Indian films.
Citing examples from his own filmography like Dangal and Lagaan, Aamir says what made them work is the fact that they appealed to multiplex audiences and mass audiences (single-screen) audiences.
Khan also attributes the failure to the fact that writers and directors in Hindi have been trying to pander to a relatively "finer" audience instead of sticking to the roots. "They've forgotten their roots," he said.
Adding to this, Javed Akhtar, who in the 70s and 80s wrote successive hits, especially as one-half of the prolific Salim-Javed writing duo behind iconic films like Zanjeer, Don and Deewar, said films need to speak a language that will understood across all sections of society. "Most filmmakers are unable to achieve this," he observes.
Aamir admitted that connecting to only a few instead of a larger audience is a reason for his film Laal Singh Chaddha not working with audiences.
Referring to the successful films of Rajkumar Hirani, Javed said they worked because they "covered the whole spectrum" and that today's films are made in a "cultural void" and acknowledged the problem of "upbringing and exposure" when it comes to today's young filmmakers.