People are scared to make big musicals now: Farah Khan

Filmmaker Farah Khan on Tuesday said she and Rohit Shetty are perhaps the last set of directors in Bollywood who continue to make big musicals, a genre which is slowly fading away.  

Farah, known for directing blockbusters like "Main Hoon Na", "Om Shanti Om" and "Happy New Year", said she tried making films on a smaller scale but things never moved forward. 

"I feel people get scared to make these big musicals because right now the situation is such that it's said, 'Don't do this, critics will cut it. Don't do that, that will happen.' 

"Maybe Rohit and I are the last two who want to make the movies that we used to watch as kids and the ones that we still remember, the ones that were happy films. I try to make a small film every time but no one lets me do that," Farah told reporters. 

The director was speaking at Big Cine Expo, where she was honoured for her work.  Farah said she loves watching different kinds of films but may not necessarily want to make them. 

"I may not be capable of making those movies. A lot of directors enjoy my movies but they may not want to make those films. Love for cinema cannot be for only a certain type of films. I am a foodie for cinema. I watch all kinds of movies, from Polish, Swedish to French and they're absolutely fantastic. 

"My sensibilities are such that I make Pan-Indian films which would run from B centre to A plus (tiers). That's a difficult thing to do because you have to please one billion people. It's easy to make a film that pleases 10,000 people." Farah said even films around a certain event are driven by content and it's unfair to say otherwise. 

"You can't say there's no content in event films. Rohit makes films that are completely enjoyable. They have a social message, they're not vulgar. The same goes for me. It's just that we like to make larger-than-life films, the trend of which is fading away slowly. 

"My attempt has always been to make films that have repeat value like that of Manmohan Desai and Nasir Hussain films," she added.