Rani Mukerji on South Indian filmmakers: 'They listen to what the audiences want'

In 2022, when Bollywood was struggling at the box office, we saw South films like RRR, Kantara, Ponniyin Selvan and Vikram emerging as money spinners. However, the Hindi film industry made a roaring comeback last year.

While Jailer, Salaar and Leo managed to grab their positions in the top 10 Indian grossers of all time, Jawan & _Animal_ , which grabbed the first and third spot in the list were helmed by South-Indian directors Atlee and Sandeep Reddy Vanga respectively.

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Sharing her thoughts at Mumbai’s FICCI Frames media industry conference, Rani Mukerji said, “They listen to what the audiences want.” She added, “When cinema is evolving and everybody’s trying to cater to a diverse audience, sometimes you lose touch with the popular or the massive want of an audience to see simple storytelling, as opposed to storytelling, which is more diverse or more evolved and more for a certain section of audiences. Maybe they are still very simple at heart and they are probably connecting with the simple storytelling that the audiences want from the filmmakers and that’s what they’re recognizing and they’re doing.”

Talking about the fascinating part of the South India industry, she shared, ‘I have worked with a lot of south Indian filmmakers in my career and I’ve learned a lot from them. The most fascinating part about the south industries, what I see is that there’s a lot of unity. They stand together, they support each other. I see so many of these events where directors are going for each other’s music opening or film announcements and standing together.”

“And of course, it happens in our (Hindi) industry as well. The beautiful part is, when you talk to them, they say that they have learned from us. And when they talk to us, we say we learn from them, and it’s always give and take. What’s beautiful here is that Indian cinema is learning and looking inwards. In the middle, they should say that our cinema is inspired from the West, or people are copying the West. Today, it’s so nice that people are getting inspired by their own because we have to make films that have to cater to our audience. And we have to listen to the voice of our audience,” she added.