Neeraj Ghaywan on India's Box-Office Obsession: ‘Only Country Where Trade Analysts are More Famous Than Critics’

Neeraj Ghaywan can articulate what bothers him most about film discourse today. “This perception that a good film is the one that does good numbers at the box office, that perception is very hard to fight,” he says.

According to Ghaywan, even within the industry, the obsession with numbers has become inescapable. “We may all talk about it and feel good about it, but people out there are thinking only in terms of numbers,” he says. The fixation, he adds, isn’t casual or occasional. “Everybody I talk to is talking about numbers. They’re ferociously looking at them every day.”

What troubles him most is how that fixation has shifted influence. “I think our country is probably the only one where trade analysts are more famous than critics. Their word is taken more seriously than critics. That is the sad part,” Ghaywan says. 

The consequence, he believes, is a narrowing of the cultural conversation around cinema. Instead of discussing feeling or intent, the industry and its audience increasingly measure films by opening weekends and lifetime totals. “We’re constantly trying to find where we stand with numbers,” he says, questioning what those figures actually represent beyond scale.

Ghaywan argues that this constant score-keeping has changed behaviour as well as perception. “We should start a culture of not talking so much about numbers. Not obsessing about them. Not making big banners about 100 crores, 500 crores,” he adds.

Still, he is realistic about how entrenched this mindset has become. “There’s just no solution for it,” he admits. For the Homebound director, the real loss lies in what gets sidelined when figures take over the conversation. Films stop being talked about as films. They turn into tallies. And in that shift, the idea of what makes a film meaningful quietly slips out of focus.