Akshay Kumar, one of the most successful commercial actors in Bollywood, working for more than 27 years in Bollywood, set to buzz for his new movie ‘Ram Setu. ‘The high frequency of consistently releasing films is declining his career, or he became the most demanded celebrity?
Akshay Kumar was at the peak of his career by giving marvelous hits during 2007-2013. Only four of his ten films become hits, and other movies end at semi-hit, average, or flop. Over-consistent appearance in the film has not worked for him at the box office.
Many movies with established stars are not working well in the industry. While starting his career in the early 90s vacuum had been created in the film industry. Superstars Amitabh Bacchan has not seen significant hits for that time. Shahrukh Khan, Salman Khan, and Aamir Khan start rising in the film industry. Akshay Kumar is also a new entrant. He was not having any filmy background, not have such an exceptional personality as a martial arts specialist. He started his career in Bollywood. Begun with the film ‘Saugandh’ had seen many ups and downs.
No one believed at that time Akshay Kumar would become such a big star in one fine day. After the Khiladi series, he gave many average movies with exceptional hits. Indeed the ‘Dhadkan’ movie changed the whole game for Akshay Kumar. Dhadkan movie gave him a break as he established a successful career. After 2000 he becomes one of the top 5 actors in Bollywood. Films like Hera Pheri, Phir Hera Pheri, and Singh is King made him a superstar.
Consistently giving a lot of mixed bags of average, hit, semi-hit, hit, blockbuster movies, he suddenly created space for himself in high-budget movies and exceedingly social message-oriented films filled with masala stories. Akshay becomes a brand for such films. He also participated in many commercial advertisements and social campaigns to improve his image as a responsible citizen.
At the same time, in early 2016, Bollywood was passing through new changes in work culture. Bollywood was divided into political camps, Modi Supporter and Anti Modi camps. I don’t know about their authenticity of ideology towards politics. Still, one thing is for sure: the Modi supporter was significant in several courses to safeguard their personal and business interests.
In many incidents shown about Akshay Kumar’s positive support to PM Modi . He participated in many government initiatives. Before the 2019 general election, Akshay Kumar came into the extreme limelight after taking a personal interview with PM Modi and asked a question to PM about his personal life, choices, liking, and dislikes. It was not a political interview, but everyone knows it is a hardcore PR interview for mutual benefit.
I think Akshay lost his charm about maintaining his political affiliations and commercial interest. He becomes unsuccessful in maintaining that image. As a result, he did not pay much attention to choosing correct stories but only appearance in the film for high budget and market-oriented. But he thought the new formula was not working anymore. He turned into commercially made socialistic movies, which most movies are not that successful at the box office. Socialistic movies as such are based on such initiatives taken by PM Modi. That becomes dangerous for him.
Suddenly the Boycott culture came from social netizens. Right-wingers thought it would help to choose people to select only nationalist ideological actors. But as a negative result, all celebrities’ films were impacted despite their various movies. Akshay Kumar’s movies also suffered from the same, even though he is known as a Modi Government supporter.
The last movie on Disney Hotstar ‘Cuttputli’ has not worked well and received negative reviews from film critics. Now Ram Setu created hype in the film industry after launching the teaser.
Will Akshay Kumar gives the next hit, or will it be one more flop? The future will provide an answer to this question and forecast the yardsticks of Akshay Kumar’s career.
This opinion article written by Mohit Soman, Senior Journalist Prittle Prattle News.
(The opinion expressed in the article are personal )
