High remuneration of leading stars of Bollywood have been a concern of lately, which is majorly due to poor opening of ₹3 crore to ₹4 crores being recorded A-list actors such as Akshay Kumar and Ajay Devgn. In a recently conducted roundtable by The Hollywood Reporter India, Karan Johar reiterated the need for male stars to reassess their remuneration, before his fellow filmmaker Zoya Akhtar intervened.
“They are not going to know. But Karan, you have to just stop paying. You have to stop paying. That’s it,” Zoya said. Karan responded that he has indeed stopped paying high fees to males actors now.
“I made a small film called Kill. I put the money in it because it was a high-concept film with a rank newcomer as the face of it. Because I’ve started doing it. It was a high-concept action film. You could not make Kill in any other way. It had to be in that train. Every star asked me for the same money that the budget was for. I was like, ‘How can I pay you? When the budget is ₹40 crore, you’re asking for ₹40 crore? Are you guaranteeing the film will do ₹120 crore? There’s no guarantee, right? So finally, I took a new boy, and he was an ‘outsider’, I have to say it,’ Karan said.
Zoya also argued that the technical team must be paid handsomely since the male actors currently take away about 70% of the film’s budget.