Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan feels that to make Indian cinema more appealing to the western audience, the film industry needs to get rid of the divide between art and commercial films and collaborate.
"What we lack is collaboration. When I see international films, I see Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg come together and do a 'Tintin', which they have grown up with. A R Rahman saab is already doing that. I think in the film industry there is this talk of art and commerce," Shah Rukh said at the NDTV Solution Summit also attended by megastar Amitabh Bachchan, Rahman and Waheeda Rehman.
"But earlier it was nice- it was called parallel meaning side by side. Then it became commercial and art, intellectual and stupid. And now it has been reduced to single screen and multiplex," he added.
The 48-year-old actor also said that the demarcation is not healthy for the growth of the industry and people should quit looking down upon filmmakers and actors who are doing commercial cinema.
"How much of demarcation can you create? What happens is you have a commercial filmmaker or a commercial actor, who is presumed as not intellectual and if they want to do something arty, they are looked down upon as people, who will corrupt their kind of cinema," Shah Rukh said.
Speaking on the topic of 'How can India win Oscars as well as leverage the considerable global impact of Bollywood?', Bachchan said though filmstars are famous, their fame is not utilised properly. The 71-year-old actor feels celebrities should be given more ambassadorial responsibilities and provided with greater representation by the system.
