Mumbai: Megastar Amitabh Bachchan feels it is easier to make documentaries on social issues and diseases than have commercial films on such subjects.
The 73-year-old actor said Bollywood has addressed such issues, but commercial success eludes them.
“Revathi had a made a film on HIV, which had Salman Khan, Shilpa Shetty and Abhishek Bachchan, it was called ‘Phir Milenge’. And sad to say, that film did not do well at the box office. I think it’s an indicator…,” Bachchan told reporters.
He was speaking at the Hepatitis B Awareness Drive, launched by the Ministry of Health in association with UNICEF.
Bachchan revealed that he is a survivor of Hepatitis B, which he contracted as a consequence of his famous accident on the sets of 1983 film “Coolie.”
“When I was in hospital, there were about 200 donors, whose blood was used… One of the donors was carrying hepatitis B virus which entered my system.
“In 2000, 18 years after that event, we discovered I was infected and I had lost 75 per cent of my liver… I am a person, who is surviving only on 25 per cent of his liver,” he said.
When asked if he would be willing to star in a film which would spread awareness on the disease, Bachchan said, “Cinema is an entertainment medium. I wouldn’t mind doing a documentary.
“You pay 2,000 rupees to watch a film in a multiplex, you don’t want to see hepatitis B or tuberculosis. It can be a part of the story, which has been very interestingly done in most of our stories.”
Bachchan also stressed that Bollywood films never stigmatise any person suffering from a disease.
“We have never tried to say that ‘Oh just because she is suffering from hepatitis you’re not going to get married.’ I think we have never ever stressed that point,” he said.