The 2024 edition of the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit concluded with a thought-provoking conversation featuring Bollywood icons Ajay Devgn and Akshay Kumar. The stars shared insights on the changing dynamics of the movie industry, including the influence of OTT platforms, the way stars determine their fees, and the growing public fixation on box office numbers. Ajay Devgn Speaks On Audience Obsession with Box Office Numbers During the session, the actors were asked why audiences today seem increasingly preoccupied with metrics like opening-day collections and lifetime earnings rather than simply judging a film's quality.
Ajay Devgn dismissed the idea that the general audience is behind this obsession, saying, “I don’t think the movie-going audience is the one obsessing over this. It’s something created by the film industry or maybe some people outside of it. The general audience either likes the film or doesn’t.
They don’t care about collections or numbers.” Devgn pointed out that much of the hype is driven by social media. “When a trailer is released, and you see hundreds of thousands of comments.
Who is actually writing them? Most real audiences don’t have time for that. They watch the movie, talk about it briefly—whether they liked it or not—and move on with their lives,” he added, questioning the origins of such intense scrutiny. Akshay Kumar Suggests a Bold Fix Adding to Devgn’s observations, Akshay Kumar proposed a humorous yet thought-provok.
