Veteran trade analyst Taran Adarsh has expressed his concern regarding increasing unavailability of leading Bollywood actors such as Salman Khan to gifted writers and directors.
Adarsh remembered the 1970s when celebrities like Amitabh Bachchan used to hear script narrations by legendary writers such as Salim-Javed directly, without going through any agents. He pointed out how during those times the creative process used to be controlled directly by actors, while managers used to only deal with logistics and finances.
Comparing this with the present situation, Adarsh highlighted that actors now have layers of managers and agencies around them, and it is almost impossible for talented writers and directors to even reach out to them directly.
He mentioned an experience where a producer, when recounting a tale to an actor, had 15 people standing in front of him—none of them being the actor himself deciding. Instead, managers now often greenlight or kill scripts, pushing aside the creative voices that once influenced Hindi cinema.
Adarsh pointed that Salman Khan has become so out of reach that his managers are acting as gatekeepers, possibly driving away top creative talent.
He called on actors to trust their own judgment and not seek a committee of advisors, cautioning that this new system threatens to alienate the very storytellers who can bring new and compelling stories to the business.
