'Salman Getting Beaten Up and Crying Didn't Work': Salim Khan Decodes Tubelight

'Salman Getting Beaten Up and Crying Didn't Work': Salim Khan Decodes Tubelight.

Salman Khan’s father Salim Khan is not known to mince words. The acclaimed script writer behind classics like Sholay, Deewar etc has always been very candid when it came to his sons’ career and personal life. Now, in an interview to scroll.in, Salim Khan, for the first time has spoken at length about the failure of Salman’s last release Tubelight.

Tubelight was one of the most anticipated films of the year with Salman in the lead and Kabir Khan as director. The duo had given the blockbuster Bajrangi Bhaijaan last year but they couldn’t repeat the magic with Tubelight. So what went wrong? Here is Salim Khan’s take.

According to the writer, the film portrayed Salman in the wrong image. The actor is known for  his action image but this film had him as a simpleton who didn’t mind shedding a tear or two. “To have an action hero like Salman getting constantly beaten up and crying all the time just didn’t work with the audience. Someone like Raj Kapoor could do any role, the common man, the lover, the comedian, but Salman doesn’t have that sort of an image. The audience kept expecting him to fight back and when he did retaliate a bit towards the end, the entire audience cheered for him, but it never went beyond a couple of blows,” he said in the interview adding that the missing love story also played a role in the failure. Bajrangi Bhaijaan, by comparison, had a strong love story between Salman and Kareen..

There were reports that Salman had compensated the distributors for the film’s underperformance and Salim Khan explained why. “The reason for compensating the distributors was that the price it had been sold at was in expectation of it making Rs 250-300 crore at the box office like most Salman films, which it didn’t. If Tubelight had been sold reasonably, it would have been a hit,” he said.

According to him, more than the stars being rejected (considering some top names like Shah Rukh Khan and Ranbir Kapoor failed to excite audiences) it is the problem of scripts. However, he was full of praise for Akshay Kumar who had reinvented himself time and again. “The way he has improved as an actor is something that no one else has been able to. The journey that he has covered is almost impossible to imagine,” he said about the Toilet: Ek Prem Katha actor.

What do you think? Did Tubelight fail because it didn’t suit Salman’s image? 

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