Bollywood actor-producer John Abraham, whose debut production Vicky Donor won accolades at the National Film Awards, received the Creative Entrepreneur of the Year title at the seventh edition of NDTV Profit’s Business Leadership Awards.
The awards were held here Monday night.
On receiving the award, John spoke about how he prefers the term ‘Indian film industry’ to ‘Bollywood’.
“The only thing I want to change about Bollywood is the name…I think we need to call it the Indian film industry and for that, we need to create content that is original and genuine. Even if you want to rip off something please pay them for it,” he said.
He also mentioned how certain changes in technology can affect the country’s showbiz at large.
“As long as we don’t have free content we are going to be pretty much where we are. I recently went to Los Angeles and wanted to see what they offer in terms of technologies. They are light years ahead of us,” John said here.
Comparing the Hollywood and Bollywood worlds, he said: “It’s also that our budgets are way lower for our films. We sell far more tickets but we sell at a much lower price which is why we don’t generate that kind of income. $20 billion is probably what Hollywood generates versus our 4.5 billion.”
The awards ceremony also saw the presence of corporate honchos like Kumar Mangalam Birla, Anand Mahindra, N. Chandrasekaran and Mallika Srinivasan. (IANS)