In an exclusive chat with ET NOW, Shahrukh Khan, talks about his new movie Ra.One and the film marketing strategies. Edited excerpts:
You are clearly a maverick and once again you proved to us with Ra.One, its many strategic firsts as you would yourself put it. For a film like Ra.One, I was told that you are really attempting that this particular character will not die post the movie and it plans to live on with many more Ra.Ones, probably sequels coming on and you are really looking to make and create a Ra.One character for the long term, that's a very maverick move, something that has not been attempted in India before. How did you think of it?
Shahrukh Khan : I would like it to happen like that but having been in the business for so long, there is many a slip by the time you get the movie from the paper onto the celluloid. Always everyone makes a film with a lot of love and hope that you can first of all make everyone like it and then certain films, which you even assume a different, suddenly turn out to be different, so movies take a life of their own but having said that, when I thought of Ra.One, Ra.One being the bad guy, actually who I would like to go on is G.One, the good guy because normally superheroes are the one and I would like to get new villains. One of the strange thoughts, which I think this is the first time I am saying it anywhere is I want to name each film with the name of the new villain.
Sonali Krishna : Wow!
Shahrukh Khan : Everyone always has a superhero name, that's a thought, it could be completely wrong. Nobody has done it. There must be a reason nobody has done it or maybe nobody thought of it but I really would like to do that because there are two reasons. One, we do not have films, which are designed to be franchise. They just get made, so Dhoom was a fantastic franchise, Don, we never thought we will have a part 2 or Golmaal, so these are certain films, which just take a life of their own and then we decide to do, but it is important that we do start making films, so they create an event. Movie watching is now an everyday thing. Earlier on when we used to watch a movie, that was the day set aside for a movie. Now movies is one of the things that you do as the day goes on. You meet friends, you hang out at the mall, watch the movie, then go and have food and drinks. So it is one of the things, every moviemaker has to make sure that on one day, this should become a part and parcel of entertainment, so you need to create it like an event, so that was one reason that I just felt. I worked for 20 years. I have this huge interest in trying to bring technology as a producer into cinema, that's the only thing you can control.
You cannot control the story. You cannot control the actors. You cannot control the fate of a film but what you can control is what it looks like and how it seems international. Whenever I travel, I see some other films and I get always, having done 70 films, I am like my film does not look like this, our films do not look like this, so it is important for me to do that for that reason. The second was that there is a genre of filmmaking. There are so many genres that we are not being able to tap. Youngest country in the world in the next 3-4 years, exposed to world cinema, fear that they would stop watching our own films, local films, regional films. We need to make them look as cool, as international as the world cinema because that's what they are used to, so I want to make that. I thought Ra.One, superhero would be a genre, which can create that. The bottom line is you spend a lot of money on this but most of the R&D and all the VFX and all the hardware that you bought for the film sort of becomes a little redundant if you do not make another one, so it would be nice if all the investment that we have made can work towards giving us another film like that but all that like I said in the beginning depends on, if you like the film, you make the second one. If you do not like the film, you can keep on having any plan that you ar
You are clearly a maverick and once again you proved to us with Ra.One, its many strategic firsts as you would yourself put it. For a film like Ra.One, I was told that you are really attempting that this particular character will not die post the movie and it plans to live on with many more Ra.Ones, probably sequels coming on and you are really looking to make and create a Ra.One character for the long term, that's a very maverick move, something that has not been attempted in India before. How did you think of it?
Shahrukh Khan : I would like it to happen like that but having been in the business for so long, there is many a slip by the time you get the movie from the paper onto the celluloid. Always everyone makes a film with a lot of love and hope that you can first of all make everyone like it and then certain films, which you even assume a different, suddenly turn out to be different, so movies take a life of their own but having said that, when I thought of Ra.One, Ra.One being the bad guy, actually who I would like to go on is G.One, the good guy because normally superheroes are the one and I would like to get new villains. One of the strange thoughts, which I think this is the first time I am saying it anywhere is I want to name each film with the name of the new villain.
Sonali Krishna : Wow!
Shahrukh Khan : Everyone always has a superhero name, that's a thought, it could be completely wrong. Nobody has done it. There must be a reason nobody has done it or maybe nobody thought of it but I really would like to do that because there are two reasons. One, we do not have films, which are designed to be franchise. They just get made, so Dhoom was a fantastic franchise, Don, we never thought we will have a part 2 or Golmaal, so these are certain films, which just take a life of their own and then we decide to do, but it is important that we do start making films, so they create an event. Movie watching is now an everyday thing. Earlier on when we used to watch a movie, that was the day set aside for a movie. Now movies is one of the things that you do as the day goes on. You meet friends, you hang out at the mall, watch the movie, then go and have food and drinks. So it is one of the things, every moviemaker has to make sure that on one day, this should become a part and parcel of entertainment, so you need to create it like an event, so that was one reason that I just felt. I worked for 20 years. I have this huge interest in trying to bring technology as a producer into cinema, that's the only thing you can control.
You cannot control the story. You cannot control the actors. You cannot control the fate of a film but what you can control is what it looks like and how it seems international. Whenever I travel, I see some other films and I get always, having done 70 films, I am like my film does not look like this, our films do not look like this, so it is important for me to do that for that reason. The second was that there is a genre of filmmaking. There are so many genres that we are not being able to tap. Youngest country in the world in the next 3-4 years, exposed to world cinema, fear that they would stop watching our own films, local films, regional films. We need to make them look as cool, as international as the world cinema because that's what they are used to, so I want to make that. I thought Ra.One, superhero would be a genre, which can create that. The bottom line is you spend a lot of money on this but most of the R&D and all the VFX and all the hardware that you bought for the film sort of becomes a little redundant if you do not make another one, so it would be nice if all the investment that we have made can work towards giving us another film like that but all that like I said in the beginning depends on, if you like the film, you make the second one. If you do not like the film, you can keep on having any plan that you ar
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