Saif Ali Khan, whose last few movies tanked at the box office, has tasted success with Sacred Games on Netflix. Shah Rukh Khan’s Red Chillies Entertainment is now entering the online streaming space with Bard of Blood, which stars Emraan Hashmi.
ThePrint asks: Saif Ali Khan in Sacred Games: Is Netflix the only way for Bollywood Khans to stay relevant?
Like Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep in Hollywood, the Khans have many more years of great cinema in them
Kaveree Bamzai
Senior Journalist
“I am big! It’s the pictures that got small.” Will there come a time when the three Khans will do a Norma Desmond from Sunset Boulevard and say this about themselves? Do Saif Ali Khan’s career and his reinvention through Sacred Games show that streaming services are the only way for the Khans to continue their ascendancy in Bollywood beyond three decades? I don’t think so. They are superstars with worldwide footprints and their survival depends on good scripts and good directors, principles which are platform-agnostic. Like Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep in Hollywood, the Khans have many more years of great cinema in them. All they have to do is choose wisely.
As cultural scholar Rajinder Dudrah says, streaming services with their extended series and episodes allow for far more character development and content experimentation than say a feature-length commercial Hindi film. “The subject matter can be much darker and grown-up too,” he adds.
So the Khans can certainly take more risks, but this is as true of the big screen as it is of the shrinking screen. Do we want Shah Rukh Khan to put his considerable weight behind a been-there-done-that Bard of Blood or star in entertainment we’ve not seen before? Can Salman Khan be encouraged to play a character for digital media rather than another version of himself? Can Aamir Khan be persuaded to showcase more of himself? And what about the possibility of these three coming together for a project as Robert De Niro and Al Pacino did for Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, which raised the old issue of the sanctity of the theatrical window? Imagine that.
Netflix, which is not driven by Bollywood hierarchies and is creating story-driven content, is perfect for Saif
Samira Sood
Associate Editor, ThePrint
Calling them The Khans doesn’t take into account their vastly different career choices and personas. But if we are going with that term, it is interesting that we are now, after the success of Sacred Games, willing to consider Saif a Khan. The Khans, traditionally, have been a club of three — Salman, Shah Rukh and Aamir — all practically the founding members of the Rs 100-crore club.
Saif, who wasn’t instantly successful in Bollywood — his first hit as a solo male lead was Hum Tum, a good 11 years after his debut in 1993 — and whose career includes unconventional movie choices such as Omkara, Ek Hasina Thi, Eklavya and Being Cyrus, has been included in the Khan troika, if at all, only as an afterthought.
However, he is the only Khan who has never allowed his real-life persona to overshadow the role he’s playing. Given that, an experimental platform like Netflix, which is not driven by Bollywood hierarchies and is creating story-driven content, is perfect for Saif.
Aamir and SRK have seen more mainstream success, but they are also smart businessmen. With the Red Chillies Entertainment-produced web series Bard of Blood set to stream on Netflix in September, SRK clearly has his eye on the money. But it is difficult to imagine Salman, with his larger-than-life persona and total lack of acting skills, faring well on an online streaming platform — he is a creation of the big screen and exemplifies its culture of toxic masculinity, a culture that has enough fans to guarantee that his every film is a success. Salman is the only Khan who doesn’t have the talent or the need to go elsewhere.
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The three Khans are a bit beyond the purses of Netflix & Amazon, at the moment
Amit Upadhyaya
Senior Copy Editor, ThePrint
It’s near-absurd to suggest that — Saif Ali Khan can be clubbed with the three ‘Khans’, and the famed trio needs a cushion to escape the box office pressures.
In 2019, the year’s biggest first week belonged to Salman Khan’s Bharat, a mediocre film that still managed Rs 200 crore in collections. Shah Rukh Khan’s unqualified disaster Zero did a business of close to Rs 90 crore — a number any mid-level star would happily take. And Aamir Khan’s last release, Thugs of Hindostan, opened to an earth-shattering Rs 48 crore on the first day.
The suggestion that these stars are irrelevant doesn’t bear scrutiny. Netflix, and other streaming platforms, are aggressively looking at the Indian web market, with the former leading the pack in terms of budgets and content quality. But ask any executive and they would tell you that these stars are just a bit beyond the purses of these companies, at the moment.
Whether they need a career metamorphosis — as in the case of Shah Rukh — or just some better films — like with Salman and Aamir — is debatable, but what the three stars certainly don’t need are premature obituaries.
(And while Saif is a worthy actor, don’t mistake him for a ‘Khan’.)
Saif joined the bandwagon early with Sacred Games, let’s see if the other Khans dare to take the risk
Fiza Jha
Journalist, ThePrint
I think the Khans will survive just fine if they stick to conventional films in Bollywood. But getting onto streaming platforms like Amazon Prime and Netflix does offer them the potential to stay relevant among a growing section of urban millennials. Movie-going today is expensive and time-consuming, and most people who live in big metropolitan cities are more likely to log on to Netflix at least once a day than buy a Rs 500 ticket to go watch a Bollywood movie, which might well turn out to be awful.
Since Netflix, Amazon and Hotstar are brimming with so much quality content, there is also a growing sense that a project needs to be rich in content for it to actually work. A big release with elaborate promotions won’t necessarily translate into a successful project. While Saif Ali Khan climbed on to the bandwagon early with Sacred Games, let us see if Salman, Aamir and Shah Rukh dare to take the risk as well. So yes, while the the three Khans may survive outside Netflix, it is yet to be seen if they thrive as part of it.
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The real fight is not among film stars but between online streaming platforms and traditional theatres
Ekta Handa
Web Editor, ThePrint
Online streaming platforms like Netflix have definitely opened up new avenues for actors and, most importantly, have changed the way audiences consume content. Today, many viewers prefer to watch a movie or a show online in the comfort of their homes than go to the theatre. No wonder actors are also now turning to these online streaming platforms. With Shah Rukh Khan producing Bard of Blood, Abhishek Bachchan starring in Breathe 2 on Amazon Prime series, and Saif Ali Khan playing the lead in Sacred Games — it seems like Netflix, Amazon Prime and other online streaming platforms are the place to be.
Having said that, actors like Salman Khan, Aamir Khan and Shah Rukh Khan owe their success to the big screen. These three still have the ability to attract huge crowds to the theatres. That’s why we see Shah Rukh Khan only produce a Netflix show and not star in it. When Salman brings an Eid release or Aamir brings a movie during Christmas — although his last film Thugs of Hindostan was a flop — people flock to theatres and spend oodles of money to watch them.
Stars have always driven crowds, which is why online streaming platforms choose to cast them in their shows. The real fight is not among film stars, but between online streaming platforms and traditional theatres. Netflix’s clash of interest with theatres has come out in the open with the latter setting tough conditions for a big screen release of Martin Scorsese’s new movie The Irishman, which is produced by the OTT platform.
By Revathi Krishnan and Taran Deol