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Actor Fawad Khan is coming to your nearest cinemas with his upcoming film Moneyback Guarantee this Eid. While promoting the film, in an interview with Independent Urdu, the The Legend of Maula Jatt star shared his two cents on the present and future of Pakistani cinema.

“We all want the [film] industry to grow, to have more employment opportunities and an increase in revenue,” he remarked. “We want people at every income group to benefit [from the growth of the industry], everyone to make money, everyone to make good money.”

In response to a question that compared the progress of the Pakistani film industry on a world stage, he said, “It’s better if we do not compare ourselves with the world right now since our opportunities are very limited.”

“You cannot compare a film that has a budget of 15 to 20 crores here with a film with a $500 or 400 million budget. Even if we talk about our neighboring country [India], they have budgets of 300 crores, 400 crores, or 500 crores.

“The point is that when the market gives you a return, then you invest. So I think the cycle has right now started. When this wheel will rotate, returns will increase and investment in films will increase, the industry on its own will expand,” he said.

“People’s desire to watch films will grow that ‘Oh, we want to watch it now this film is bigger than the last which was bigger than the one before it’,” he added. “Right now, to make the comparison is unfair.”

The actor expressed optimism and hope for the country’s cinema. “But I feel that in our limited resources, how much we have pulled off and how much we continue to achieve, I feel it seems promising that the market [for films] will expand.”

Addressing his own experience of working in Bollywood for films like Khoobsurat, Kapoor & Sons and Ae Dil Hai Mushkil and Hollywood for Disney+‘s Ms. Marvel, the actor said, “We all have worked abroad, we should work there and here too, but to market a local product and develop an industry, working there is a must, that’s alright.

“But do quality work. People would say [to him] that you are saying all of this but you don’t do that much work. But one, the quality of work should be improved. We should be making our original identity, “ he said.

“Like I said about Maula Jatt that doing it in Punjabi was a very unique kind of a thing. Changing the story in such a manner, it was a unique film released among the diverse group of films that are coming out,” stressed the Humsafar actor.

Such unique projects will attract more actors to do them, he argued. “They will work in local content more.”

Khan said that the country needs digital streaming platforms. “Local online platforms should be there which means digital should be online too,” he stated.

“At the end of the day, everyone wants to make money so they go to every platform where they are getting work from,” said Khan. “However, if the opportunity is created here, I feel there’s a very big revenue to be made from this…humongous revenue to be made from this.

“But reduce ‘free viewing’ and I am not only talking about piracy. I am saying you take what is owed to you, what you deserve as makers whether they are making TV dramas or films. And the ex-pat community needs to support that.”