‘Bollywood is getting starved of genres’

With a horde of films based on real life people and incidents being churned out in Bollywood, filmmaker Vikram Bhatt feels that the “industry is getting starved of genres” which is why people making more biopics.

Asked if he, too, plans to helm one such project, Bhatt says, “I don’t know why but biopics have never interested me. I’m sure they make some good stories but at the end of the day, a story is a story whether you’re talking about a real person or a fictional character. Ironically, a biopic is narrating a cinematic life. So, you are telling the story of a real person who has a cinematic life. I’d rather stick to a cinematic life of a cinematic person. So, I don’t see myself making biopics.”

Known for making horror films, Bhatt says there’s not much left for filmmakers to explore. “Slowly in films, we’re getting starved of genres. We can’t make action film any more. Hollywood has taken it from us. We can’t make emotional drama because TV has taken that. We can’t make too many comedies in cheaper budgets because the web world has taken,” says the filmmaker, who was last seen in the web series Untouchables, directed by his daughter Krishna Bhatt.

Elaborating on this sudden influx of the same kind of films being made, he says everyone wants to play safe. “Unfortunately, we are always in a phase where there’s a kind of a herd mentality. If one comedy film does well, then everyone is making comedies. If a biopic does well, all are on the biopic wagon,” he says. And what about films being made on taboo subjects? Bhatt says in the absence of big budgets and stars, filmmakers rely on sensationalism. He says, “Taboo subjects will happen for low budget films because they need something that will grab eyeballs. Also, when you don’t have a big cast or a big marketing budget, you have not much to rely on except for sensationalism. This will happen but not so in the mainstream, I think.”

Vikram Bhatt was last seen in a web series