Actor Riteish Deshmukh has called for some important changes in the way Maharashtra sees its cinema. The actor attended a special event organised by Samajwadi Party, and said that Marathi cinema in Maharashtra is getting diminished because of the demand for Hindi cinema.
The actor said that it was a Marathi speaking man, Dadasaheb Phalke, who laid the foundation of Indian cinema but, after a century the theatrical system has become skewed favouring Hindi cinema over Marathi in theatres of Maharashtra.
He said, “The film industry was born here in Maharashtra, Mumbai and a Marathi man Dadasaheb Phalke gave birth to it, I am not trying to create a divide here, but people from other parts of the country came here and made this journey their own and that is why the headquarters of the film industry then became Mumbai, then regional cinema began to develop in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka”.
He further mentioned, “You will see the same in Karnataka and Malayalam industry, but in Maharashtra, the first choice is Hindi and Marathi is the second choice and in the intervening years, it has started decreasing further If you look at the population of Maharashtra, 10 to 11 crore people are Marathi-speaking, which is more than the population of Andhra and Tamil Nadu.
Marathi films are made up to INR 3-7 crores but when you go to watch in the theater, you have to spend as much for tickets as for a INR 100 crore film made in Hindi, due to budget restrictions, Marathi films could not be made in the way they are made in Hindi”.
He explained the economics behind the Hindi and Marathi film industry, as he said, “When people go to watch a film and they have the option of spending Rs 200 for a Rs 5 crore film or Rs 100 crore for a film, people choose a Rs 100 crore Hindi film and that is why the Marathi film industry has shrunk.
So when I started production, my father said that you are working in the Hindi film industry but what about Marathi, that is why it has been 10 to 11 years of my film company and we have made 6 films and all 6 films are in Marathi”.
“Although I have worked in the Hindi film industry, I felt that for my people, films should be made for their region that they can see and I did not make films on the budget of Hindi films, but according to the Marathi films that were being made, we spent more and tried to make a bigger film”, he added.