We will make them run for their money: Salman on Bollywood’s new gen actors

PTI, Apr 6, 2023, 3:49 PM IST

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The younger lot of Hindi film actors are talented and hard working, says Salman Khan, but the big five, Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan, Akshay Kumar, Ajay Devgn and himself of course, will ”tire them out, retire them” and make them ”run for their money”.

Rooting for his band of contemporaries, who have ruled over the Hindi film industry for several decades, the 57-year-old superstar said they won’t cede ground. ”All these guys are really good, talented, hardworking and focused. But the five of us are not going to give up so easily. Who are there in the five — Shah Rukh, Aamir, me, Akshay and Ajay,” Salman said at a press conference for the 68th edition of the Filmfare Awards on Wednesday evening. ”We will make them run for their money. We will tire them out, retire them,” he said in response to a question on which youngster will make a long-term impact. While Aamir is 58, Salman and Shah Rukh are 57, Akshay is 55 and Ajay 54.

Salman also made a case for censorship on OTT platforms, saying content on the web has too much of ”nudity, vulgarity and violence”.

”I think there should be some form of censorship on OTT because there is too much nudity, vulgarity, violence, and expletives, other content. It should stop because it is all there on smartphones these days… I understand if a 15-16 year old watches such content, but does it look good if your little daughter watches it? ”So I believe that the content should be checked on OTT. The cleaner the content, the better it is. It will be viewed even more,” he said.

The actor said such content can cause embarrassment to the artists involved as well. ”If you have performed some scenes, like lovemaking, kissing or exposing, and then you’re entering your building and your watchman is watching your content… So I just don’t think that it is good, especially for security reasons.

”We don’t need to do that, a little bit is okay but there was too much of it in the middle. Now it has come under control. People have started doing a lot of good and decent content,” Salman said. He also spoke about the series of Hindi movies that failed to perform at the box office.

The actor, who is currently awaiting the release of his latest movie ”Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan”, said filmmakers feel confident about their content but it doesn’t always translate into a good film.

”I’ve been hearing this for a long time that our Hindi films aren’t working. If you make bad films, how will they work? Everybody thinks that they’re making ‘Mughal-E-Azam’, ‘Sholay’, ‘Hum Aapke Hain Koun’ and ‘DDLJ’ but that doesn’t happen.

”Some of today’s directors with whom I have interacted and I can name them as well but won’t… they only understand India from Andheri to Colaba, which isn’t what India is… We have very cool directors and producers who want to make certain kinds of movies but they don’t work.” The audiences, Salman said, want to watch Indian films.

”Now some films have finally worked because they are purely Indian movies. Families go to watch these films in theatres.”