One of the most prominent filmmakers of Bollywood, Karan Johar, recently spoke about the bad state that Bollywood is enduring these days. During a roundtable discussion for Galatta Plus, Karan shared that the failure of Hindi movies in past months is not a phase and that the seeds of these failures were planted way back in 1980s.

He stated, "What’s happening in Hindi, the major belts — and I’m going to get slightly technical so that everybody understands — Mumbai and Delhi, which account for 60% to 70% of the number that comes in, they haven’t been behaving as consistently as they were pre-pandemic. So, what has been working is only the spectacle films, even if they’re dubbed films.”

Karan also pointed out how Bollywood became trend chasers instead of trend setters by 1980s. He said, "After Hum Aapke Hain Koun, everyone, including myself, decided to jump on the bandwagon of love, and Shah Rukh Khan was created. We let go of all our roots from the 70s, and in 2001 when Lagaan was nominated for an Academy Award, we were like, ‘Oh, now we’ll do these kind of films’ right up till the 2010s. My Name is Khan is still a root of Lagaan, in my head, which released alongside Dabangg, which again (changed trends) and people were like, ‘Now let’s start making commercial films again’. That’s the problem, we actually lack the spine and lack the conviction…”

Sharing how Bollywood strayed away from its roots, Karan concluded, “We, who should be very grateful to Salim saab and Javed saab, we let go of that cinema and went to Switzerland.”