Director AR Murugadoss blamed the language barrier for the failure of Salman Khan’s film Sikandar, saying he struggled to connect with Hindi-speaking audiences
AR Murugadoss with Aamir Khan and Salman Khan
Salman Khan’s last release Sikandar was much hyped, and expectations were high. The film marked the collaboration between the superstar and filmmaker AR Murugadoss, who had earlier delivered the hit film Ghajini with Aamir Khan in 2008. After the massive success of Atlee's Jawan starring Shah Rukh Khan, Sikandar was touted as the next big South-meets-Bollywood collaboration. However, the film failed to impress at the box office, and its collections suffered significantly. Now, four months after the film's underperformance, director Murugadoss has opened up about why he believes the film didn’t work.
AR Murugadoss blames language for Sikandar failure
While promoting his upcoming film Madharaasi, Murugadoss said that his inability to fully understand Hindi was a major reason for the film’s failure.
“When we make films in our mother tongue, it gives us strength. We know what is happening here. Today there’s a trend going on, and suddenly the audience gets connected with that trend. When we shift languages, we don’t know what the youngsters are enjoying in that language. All we need is a script to believe in.”
'Feels handicapped'
He further explained, “For instance, I can take up Telugu films, but Hindi may not work for us because after we write the script, it’s translated into English. Then it’s translated again into Hindi. We can only guess what they are saying, we’re not exactly sure what is happening. When you make a film in an unknown language and environment, it feels like you are handicapped. It’s like you don’t have hands. I strongly believe our strength depends on where we come from and the culture we belong to.”
This statement from AR Murugadoss came as a shock to many, considering Sikandar was not his first Hindi film as a director. Apart from Ghajini, which was a remake of his own Tamil film of the same name, he also directed Akshay Kumar's Holiday: A Soldier Is Never Off Duty, which too was a remake of a Tamil film. Holiday opened to positive reviews and performed well commercially. Sikandar was an original and not a remake unlike Murugadoss's previous two Hindi directorials.
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