Actor Taapsee Pannu is known for her strong characters in female-oriented films that go against tried-and-test conventions in Indian cinema, such as Thappad, Haseen Dillruba, and Phir Aayi Hasseen Dillruba, to name a few. The actor plays a role in one such film, director Anubhav Sinha's Assi. Recently, she spoke about the rarity of such films in the theatres and the digital space.
"We are on the verge of becoming an extinct species. We means films like us," the actor told PTI. She attributed it to how such films do not cater to the commercial film formula. "There is a certain template that our so-called commercial cinema abides by. We do do not conventionally fall in that template of sorts," she added.
The actor also said that streaming platforms are averse to such films as well. "They have clear mandates that only the films that are working in theatres are the films that they want to pick because they want to take that theatre audience through their platform," Taapsee Pannu said about the OTT criteria.
According to the actor, streaming platforms cater to the audience who watches mass films and potboilers in theatres, as they are already in tune with such films and because the platforms want more subscribers. The actor also urged people to watch realistic films to avoid the threat of extinction, which she earlier discussed.
While acknowledging that people would like to watch different films from time to time, as with food, she argued that it is occasionally good to break the monotony by going back to the basics. "Some day, you want to have dal chawal also, right? This is our reality, our basic," she said, referring to realistic films that go against the norm. "We should subscribe to all kinds of cinema, also this," she said.
Assi is set for a February 20 release in theatres.