Veteran actor Mohsin Gillani has taken aim at the distributors, algorithms and marketing machinery he believes have hollowed out Pakistan\u2019s entertainment industry from within, arguing that commercial pressures have increasingly taken precedence over creativity.<\/p>\n
Speaking in a\u00a0recent podcast, Gillani placed much of the blame for the decline of Pakistani cinema on the people who, in his view, turned filmmaking into a rigid formula rather than allowing writers and directors the freedom to create. \u201cDistributors are the real culprits behind the downfall of our film industry,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey dictated everything, saying you must cast Sultan Rahi with Anjuman and Mustafa Qureshi, add two rain songs, and three fight sequences.\u201d Gillani argued that this formula-driven approach, imposed from outside the creative process, eventually drained the industry of its originality.<\/p>\n
While Pakistani television has grown commercially and technically, Gillani said that \u201cthe growth has come paired with a worrying drift toward sensationalism\u201d.<\/p>\n
He linked the shift to marketing pressures that now influence scripts as much as writers do, with channels and producers, he suggested, increasingly prioritising social media reach and model casting over trained acting talent.<\/p>\n
\u201cDirectors,\u201d he said, \u201cthey are frequently pushed to insert specific scenes or storylines purely to chase commercial success, regardless of what the script actually calls for.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gillani also questioned why bold scenes had become so routine on screen. \u201cEven real-life married couples don\u2019t display everything publicly, so why project it on screen? Our dramas are rebelling against the minds of our children,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He attributed the trend to two forces: a regulatory body that he feels has become far less visible than it once was, and a social media ecosystem that rewards shock value. \u201cThis wretched social media feeds you whatever you want to consume,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen empathy leaves, and beastliness takes over, people lose sense of direction.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gillani turned his attention to the experiences of women working in the entertainment industry, arguing that the glamour associated with showbiz often obscures the challenges they face. \u201cPeople only see the glamour, but they don\u2019t realise what women in the media industry have to survive when they step out to act,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He was equally critical of the pressure on actors to take on bold scenes in order to keep pace with changing trends. Gillani suggested that the growing commercialisation of talent was reshaping the content being produced, raising concerns about what the industry was passing on to the next generation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Veteran actor Mohsin Gillani has taken aim at the distributors, algorithms and marketing machinery he believes have hollowed out Pakistan\u2019s entertainment industry from within, arguing that commercial pressures have increasingly taken precedence over creativity. Speaking in a\u00a0recent podcast, Gillani placed much of the blame for the decline of Pakistani cinema on the people who, in …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5742"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5742\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5745,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5742\/revisions\/5745"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}