In the last couple of years, one has not seen Bollywood churning out many family-friendly social dramas. There was a time when such films used to be made by the dozen and many of those garnered love and appreciation from the audience. In the recent times, the number of such films has dwindled significantly.
Producer Ashissh Saraf, who produced the devotional social drama Maa Santoshi Maa a couple of years back, strongly believes in the power of family films and feels they will be back soon.
Elaborating on the same, he says, “If you go through the history of Indian cinema, you will realise that the biggest hits have been films which dealt with family-oriented themes and delivered a social message. The last true-blue family film was perhaps the Salman Khan starrer Prem Ratan Dhan Payo. It broke all the opening day records and collected more than forty crores on the first day of its release. It emerges as a very successful film because it got the love of the family audience and they watch it repeatedly. Though it has been a couple of years since Maa Santoshi Maa released, I still get messages from people telling me that it was a film that changed their lives.”
Ashissh recently changed the name of his production house from Ashissh Filmcraft to Mrinank Films. In the near future, the company will roll out diverse content for family platforms. Making family-friendly content will be the priority.
“I love watching all kinds of content and our company will produce a wide variety of content for theatres, television and films but our priority will be to create the kind of content that family audiences can consume. That is the kind of content that has longevity and is remembered for a long time. Not many are making family films these days but that is exactly what we plan to do at the earliest.”