Vijay Sethupathi’s father, SA Chandrasekhar recently said that his son’s movie Beast relied only on Vijay’s Stardom and did not have proper screenplay. He said that new generation directors focus on their initial films carefully but when it comes to big stars, they assume Stardom will carry the day. This is not the first movie that has been happening.
For decades, script less movies still had success in Box Office due to Stardom. Only the very weak script movies flopped but average script movies still ruled Box Office because back then, audiences flocked to movies for relaxing. The typical weekend routine was to eat out and go to the movies. Technology and Lock-down brought in several changes, especially moving audiences closer to OTT than earlier. Now, audiences have realized they need not rush to a movie. They can wait for a few weeks for it to come to OTT. The reason for this is again the huge cost it takes to watch a movie with family. More than the ticket price is the cost of food and beverages in multiplexes. Torrents are also bringing the movie illegally to phones within just a day or two of movie release.As such, the Box Office revenues have come down.
This is where nepotism heroes, scions of actors/business & even established actors are failing to connect with the audiences. For years, they never bothered about the script. Director made the decisions and Stardom carried the day. No Actor today can carry a movie without a good script. The Audience's tastes have changed. Audiences are watching various languages movies.Several educated people stopped watching Telugu soaps and instead are watching Korean dramas. Telugu TV serials are mostly dubbed from other languages and few only are original. Jealousy, Hatred among family members is oft repeated theme in the movies/TV serials. Weak Story lines are extended for yrs altogether boring the audience. This has led to the educated middle class shifting to other avenues of entertainment than TV serials or story less movies in theaters.
Though these audiences have not shifted to offline entertainment, they are still watching a lot of content daily online. As such being exposed to varieties of movies, they have started to assert and exercise their choice bypassing Actor’s Brand pull. The Highest Following Actor too cannot in these days of evolving technology guarantee success with just stardom pull as they are learning from their recent debacles. Times have changed. At any point of time, audiences do relate to events in their society. SA Chandrasekhar clearly pointed out that having fights and songs without script is the fallacy of new generation directors and producers willing to invest without even reading the script.Content is King is proved yet again. . .
