What is going wrong? Why are only select films working at the box office? All these questions more or less ended when ticket rates were slashed to Rs. 75 to mark National Cinema Day. But despite that, the question about what the audience would like to see confuses most in the industry. But Abhishek Banerjee, who is both a casting director and an actor, doesn’t think it is confusing at all.

“Sometimes it is a topic, sometimes it is the humour of a particular film or a scene that is beautifully shot... there has to be something nice [so one has to observe as a filmmaker what connects with the audience]. Also, anything that’s working these days has to be credited to the makers, because they made something that is a full-fledged film, and not a half-hearted story. Half-hearted storytelling ka zamana gaya. Surely, everybody is doing it wholeheartedly now,” he shares.

The 37-year-old, last seen on the web show The Great Weddings Of Munnes, adds that gone are the days of run-of-the-mill projects. He says we “need to recognise that audiences have become smarter” and asserts even viewers know how to scrutinize scripts now.

Banerjee adds, “They see the pattern. They talk about cinematography and everything related to filmmaking. Maybe because they are making reels on social media, they understand the medium, or because of the kind of content available on OTT, which is good. This is good news; it means we are going to come up with some great films in the future.”