Hindi films suffer as they vie with regional ones: Rohit Shetty

Mumbai: Bollywood filmmaker Rohit Shetty, who is known for delivering successful commercial hits like "Chennai Express", "Singham" and "Simmba", said on Tuesday unless the Bollywood has a worldwide market like the Hollywood, one should not expect huge budgets for action films.

Talking about correlation between budget and market, Rohit said: "I think we have the access to skill, computer graphics and other technologies. But we don't have the budget for them. We do not get the required budget because we don't have the market. I see no reason to compare us to Hollywood.

"In Hollywood, they release a film in one language -- English -- and the whole of America watches it. But when we are releasing a film in Hindi in India, we are also competing with the regional film industry like Tamil, Telugu, Punjabi, Bengali and other films that are also doing well at the box office. That is why we have competition within ourselves."

Shetty was taking part in an interactive session at the 20th edition of FICCI FRAMES, the global media and entertainment conclave, here on Tuesday.

While footfalls in the theatres are constantly declining, affecting business, Rohit feels screen density needs to be increased in the small towns because a good amount of business comes from there.

"There is no doubt that the government should help us in the matter. We should increase screens in small towns. My last film 'Simmba', which was a huge hit, witnessed a footfall of 2 crore. In a country with a population of 135 crore, this is nothing, we need more theatres.

"When we talk about theatres, the hall owners have their own issues of maintenance, stuff salary, etc. But we have to come together with the help of the government to find a way out to have more screens," Shetty said.

On the piracy affecting the movie business, Shetty said: "People prefer to watch movies on their mobiles because in an urban area like Mumbai, nobody wants to get stuck in the traffic for hours to watch a film. It is convenient for them to watch the pirated version of a film on their phones."

"We keep saying piracy is happening, but who is watching them? We have to take a stand and stop watching films like that. Unless we do it, only the government initiatives won't work," said the filmmaker.