You don't know the audience: Ajay Devgn on why Hindi filmmaking is 'most difficult'

Actor Ajay Devgn has spent more than three decades navigating Hindi cinema, from the single-screen era of the 1990s to the multiplex boom and now an audience that is increasingly fragmented across theatres, streaming platforms, cities, towns and social media. And if there is one thing he believes has become particularly complicated in that journey, it is figuring out exactly who a Hindi film is being made for.

During his appearance at the FICCI Frames on Wednesday, the star touched upon the challenges of making a Hindi-language film as compared to other language films. "I am not taking credit away from any other cinema. If you call it traditional or international cinema — I mean it’s as difficult to make films there. But I personally feel that making a Hindi film is the most difficult, because you do not know what your target audience is," he said.

It is an interesting argument coming from an actor who has moved between vastly different genres, from action-heavy commercial entertainers to dramas, thrillers and franchises.

Devgn's point is not that making a language film is easy, but his argument is about the nature of the audience and the challenge of trying to make one film work across an extraordinarily diverse Hindi-speaking market.

"When you make a Punjabi film or a Telugu film or a Tamil film. You understand the audience. Because this is for a certain region. And you know their taste. So you will target that audience. For a Hindi film to do numbers. I think every 80 to 90 kilometres, the language changes. The thought process changes. The thinking changes. Then you talk about mass, class, cities, urban areas. You talk about town. Then you talk about the suburbs and things like that,” he explained.

And that, according to Devgn, is where the real problem begins. Hindi cinema is not dealing with one neatly identifiable audience. He added, “So it’s liked by one section of the audience. And the other section doesn’t like it. So the numbers don’t come. Whereas in any other cinema, even in international cinema. They know their target audience. Here we have to target everybody. And even when you target, how do you cut across to everybody? So that’s where I feel that it is the most difficult to write a Hindi film.”

The actor, who is ready with Drishyam: The Conclusion, the third film from the popular franchise, also discussed how audiences have changed and evolved in the last few years.

“As the audience evolves, you need to evolve too. Like, you need to put a lot more effort and thought into it and think about how you target everybody. Earlier, there were no multiplexes, so we knew who our target audiences were. I am talking about the 90s. But since the multiplexes have come in, we’ve got to target the single screen, multiplex and higher-end multiplex audience. So, it is difficult, and we’ve to put in more thought."

Devgn's Drishyam: The Conclusion is doing a fantastic business in advance booking. The film, directed by Abhishek Pathak, is slated to hit the screens on October 2.