‘Why Can’t We Be One Industry?’: Akshay Kumar on the North vs South Films Debate

Akshay Kumar's next film 'Prithviraj' releases on 3 June.

Actor Akshay Kumar.

(Photo Courtesy: Twitter)

Akshay Kumar has weighed in on the debate about the south and north Indian film industry. Akshay said that it is ‘unfortunate that we keep dividing ourselves’ and questioned why the industry needs to be divided into the North and South industry.

With the success of films like RRR and K.G.F: Chapter 2, there has been discussion about films from the South outperforming films from Bollywood. Recently, a Twitter interaction between Ajay Devgn and Kichcha Sudeep also sparked a debate about Hindi as India’s national language.

Akshay Kumar said to India Today, “We are all trying to do our work. It is unfortunate that this debate is happening, and we are all becoming victims of it. Why can’t we be called one industry? Why are we being called the North and South industry? All our languages are good, we are talking our mother tongues and we are all beautiful. It is unfortunate that we keep dividing ourselves.”

Talking about remakes, Akshay added, “Someone questioned me in the morning about remakes and why are we remaking it? I asked why not! What is the problem? Is there a problem in remaking? OMG, Oh My God! , my film was remade in Telugu and became a huge hit. Their Rowdy Rathore we remade and worked for all of us.”

He further said, “Why does anyone have a problem? Why shouldn’t it happen? People question on remix songs, why shouldn’t we remix? There are originals being made and then there are remakes, why is anyone having a problem with them coexisting? If a good film is being made in South and we buy its rights and remake it, what is wrong in it?”

On the work front, Akshay was last seen in Bachchhan Paandey directed by Farhad Samji. He has multiple releases lined up including Aanand L Rai's Raksha Bandhan and Chandraprakash Dwivedi's Prithviraj which is slated for release on 3 June.