From roses to fainting in hall: Leading journalists reveal how Bolly superstars create hype

Corporate booking, PR strategies, low-quality content, and over-hyping mediocre performances have been the new norms in Bollywood to stay successful, relevant, and importantly to prove dominance at the box office and among audience. And to achieve that big Bollywood producers, actors, distributors and directors are ready to go to any length.

Earlier these discussions were held behind closed doors and it was all quite hush-hush. Contrarily, nowadays many leading trade analysts, critics and journalists are coming forward with the real facts demolishing the wall of delusion surrounding celluloid and stars that have held audience captive for so many years.

Leading journalists get candid on new creativities in PR campaigning

During a podcast with Siddharth Kannan, Pinkvilla fame Himesh Mankad laid out some shocking facts. According to Himesh, “Number 1 phase during COVID was every talent used to go to Viviena Mall and promote their film because they used to get the optics. Wahan pe jake aap ye search karna in 2020-21-23 every time an actor visited the mall one fan would faint. And one fan would come with a rose.”

Mankad added, “It can’t be a coincidence that every time a fan is fainting seeing the star. Toh planted hai na banda. Toh Kya isse stardom badhta hai. Nahi. Main toh kabhi shock ho jata hoon ki kabhi kabhi airport pe fan rose leke kaise pahonch jata hai. These are orchestrated and manufactured and it is sad.”

The other journalist narrated how stories are made that a fan came from 200 km on cycle and similar stories to promote the popularity level of a particular star or an actor.

Apart from Himesh, Mid-Day journalist Mayank Shekhar and Rohit Khilnani from Bollywood Hungama were also a part of this podcast. The journalists also lamented the fact that today’s actors do not know how to speak in Hindi even though they are trying for a career in the Hindi film industry. Himesh added that he does not believe that Sky Force was a success despite the producer calling it a huge hit.

Journalists also pointed out how AI was used for Ibrahim Ali Khan’s dubbing

The recent piece of trash to release on OTT and that launched Ibrahim Ali Khan was Nadaaniyan. The flick got slammed for bad acting, bad content, and overall bad presentation. Interestingly, during this podcast, the journalists disclosed how AI voice correction was used by Ibrahim Ali Khan for the movie. Talking about the same Rohit said, “There is some software on dubbing which you can use to make it (voice) clearer or something.”

When asked whether it is a welcome change or not, Rohit said, “Absolutely not. How long can you hide someone’s original voice? Someday they will come on the video someday they will put on something.”