Madhureeta Mukherjee (BOMBAY TIMES; January 16, 2019)

The filmmaker has stepped on gas, he’s on a success run and there is no looking back now. Known for his larger-than-life potboilers, Rohit Shetty says that he’s fought hard to reach this coveted spot, and today, he beams with pride when we talk about the Rohit Shetty brand of cinema. Fuelled with excitement at the super success of his recent film Simmba, Rohit talks to us about his universe of cinema, how he’s never followed the tide and the fact that there is no success by fluke in this business. He’s on a roll, read on…

One success after another, it must be a kickass feeling. Does it take a while for the success of a film to sink in?
After so many years, yes, it takes some time to sink in. I feel at ease knowing that the film is doing good business and people are loving it, but I don’t enjoy success till it reaches a certain level. I have a rock solid team, who has been with me through thick and thin, and believe me, they are the ones who set targets for me. Even if I tell them to stop pushing me so hard, they don’t budge. They say, ‘Itna toh hona chahiye’.

In case of Simmba, the trailer gave us a clear hint of what to expect, and of course, it superseded those expectations. There was also a feeling amongst the audience before watching the film that this will this be another Singham…
(Cuts in) This happens with every film of mine. I am sure that when I am ready with Sooryavanshi, people will ask, ‘Aapne Singham bana liya, Simmba bana liya, ab Sooryavanshi, kyun?’ When we made Singham, people asked me, ‘Dabangg aai hai, toh aap Singham kyun bana rahe ho?’ You can’t compare Simmba to Singham. Yes, it is the cop universe, but the story and characters are far from each other. This thought of creating a cop universe happened when we started writing Simmba. I have been seeing the way kids love the Avengers series — not that I am comparing it to Avengers; that is too big — but they are ready for this now. There was also a lurking fear that it could be rejected, as I was bringing a hit brand into another one. But when you see the audience laugh, cry, whistle and clap in the movie, you know that you got it right.

Your actors totally believe in your brand of cinema. No wonder you could pull off three huge stars to appear in one movie — Ajay Devgn, Akshay Kumar and Ranveer Singh. Will we see you attempting more such stunts in the future?
My world is a risky one where half the tide is against us, so the actors I work with have to truly believe in the world I create or else, they can’t be a part of my cinema. I have faced problems only once or twice, which made me realise that I should not work with actors who do not believe in my world. I know bringing three huge stars together is rare, but they all said ‘yes’ in one go. Ajay and Akshay go back a long way and they believe in this kind of cinema. They have done three-hero films in the past, so they have no sense of insecurity. That goes for Ranveer, too. A lot of stars do guest appearances for each other in their movies; that’s not new. I think what we need to do is create our own superheroes and bring them together in one film. We have to build characters, make them brands and bring them together. The idea is to get their characters together and not just the stars. We did it with Simmba and that’s what has worked.

Will we see women in uniform in your cop universe?
Yes, of course. That is how the universe will be complete and eventually, they all will come together.

It hasn’t been such a great year for full-on masala entertainers, but Simmba came right at the end of the year with a bang and left us stunned. So, it challenges this changing trend that people keep harping about — that such larger-than-life cinema is not finding favour with our audience. It’s ultimately about how well you make a film and package it, right?
I believe that now massy films have become parallel cinema. There are fewer people making commercial cinema of this scale now. If you see the commercial palette in 2018, there are probably only 10 full-on commercial films, out of which only Simmba and a few others did well. People have been telling me, ‘You have turned the multiplex into a single screen’. I have seen college kids whistling and cheering at a multiplex while watching Simmba. Today, massy is cool. I believe that if you get it right, the audience will watch a commercial film with as much enthusiasm as any other.

So, you are saying that making a commercial film today is far riskier business than making any other kind? And it needs far more guts, too?
Yes, making a full-on commercial film is the riskiest business as the stakes are too high. The budgets are high, and there is a set of audience, probably 25 per cent of them, who don’t like this kind of cinema, and there is nothing wrong with it. Yet, you go ahead and make such movies. People think that this is the easy way out, but all my films, whether it was Golmaal or Simmba, as a producer, if the film didn’t touch a certain number, I would have been at a loss. I had to fight to be where I am and have reached this far as I didn’t follow the tide. It takes guts to make a massy movie and it’s tougher, too. The kind of films that are working today are either hardcore content-driven films or commercial films with a solid story and performances. You can’t take the middle path. Films don’t become hits by fluke anymore.

A Rohit Shetty film plays to the gallery and we all expect that too, but the interesting point here is how well you know the pulse of the audience. Ranveer told me that during the edit, he asked you why you were holding a scene longer than required and you had said, ‘Claps padegi na yahan pe, so you have to accommodate that’. And well enough, there it was...
(Laughs!) I guess it is because I am perfectly tuned in with my world and my audience. I started working at 16, and I have been working for 28 years. I have closely observed the 90s’ evolution, all the way to the 2000s and the advent of the digital world. And all through, I have stayed true to what I love. It is not like I am trying to prove a point, but it is working. Today, Singham is a brand, but back in 2011, no raw action film was doing well, barring Dabangg. I didn’t want to be confident about just doing comedies, so I thought chalo, let’s make Singham. We also thought that if it doesn’t do well, we have films like Bol Bachchan and Chennai Express on our slate. My team and I were that scared. While doing every film, and even after 10 successful movies, in my mind I have this 10 per cent fear that a film could go wrong. And that fear makes me work harder. Today, I am sitting here and talking about the success of Simmba and my other hit films, but the moment I am done with this, I will be back to the zone where I was on my first film. I will be thinking, ‘yeh nahin chalegi toh kya hoga, aur kya kar sakte hain’. I cut myself off from success. It’s an unpredictable job that we are in, so you can’t take anything for granted. I understand that cinema is an art, passion and all that, but ultimately, someone is paying their hard earned money to watch what you have made. As a filmmaker, you have to value that and be damn sure of what you are doing.