MUMBAI: Bollywood actor Saif Ali Khan has remarked that unlike films, the digital streaming platforms provide artists with an ‘egalitarian’ environment where everyone is treated as an equal.
“Since OTT platforms do not provide viewership numbers, it helps people in judging a film or a series purely on its merit,” he said while talking to an Indian news agency.
He was one of the first mainstream Bollywood stars to enter the digital realm with Netflix’s Sacred Games in 2018. Khan received massive acclaim for the show, which also starred Nawazuddin Siddiqui.
He further said, “It’s wonderfully liberating not to be bothered by the box office, which naturally controls creativity quite a lot. The audience decides what they want to see and who becomes a star.”
“A star commands a certain opening day number. Your price tag is based on market value, but to have an egalitarian environment is always good,” Khan added.
Referring to Netflix’s Sacred Games, Saif Ali Khan said that both him and Siddiqui were equals on the sets and were competing with each other for the betterment of the project, without an industry-set hierarchy.
“When Nawazuddin and I did Sacred Games we behaved like equals and on the same kind of level like everybody else. It’s a more egalitarian atmosphere there,” the 50-year-old asserted.
However, he said, in film industry whereby artists are treated in line with their stardom. “Which is there because it’s a capitalist world,” he added. The actor went on to add that one can compare a film to a novel and a short film to a poem but that doesn’t mean that a poem is any easy to write.
“There’s a movement going on, things are exploding in Bollywood. Filmmakers are pushing, trying and raising the bar. If you’re an actor right now, you’re going to be a part of the change as well. All you’ve to do is agree to be a part of their vision and have the imagination to go along with it,” he concluded.
