Filmmaker Nikkhil Advani has worked with some of the biggest stars across generations, including Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Akshay Kumar and John Abraham. But now, he believes that star power alone is not enough to bring audiences to a film.Filmmaking has become like the share market: Nikkhil Advani“I don’t think it’s only about star power. I think it’s about connection,” the filmmaker tells us, as he collaborates with a younger generation of actors and performers in his upcoming web series The Revolutionaries. Advani says the equation between stars and audiences has changed, with connection increasingly playing a bigger role in what viewers choose to watch. He points to actor Bhuvan Bam, who portrays Rash Behari Bose, as an example. “The biggest thing about Bhuvan Bam is that everybody feels that his success is personal. His success is their success. I think that it is a powerful motivator for people to embrace and celebrate what they are choosing to watch,” he explains.Advani also cites Sairat to underline his point, noting that the film worked despite its lead actors not having conventional star power at the time. “Both of them were new kids. There was no such thing as star power in that. But the film reached the masses as they connected,” he says. For him, an audience’s emotional connection with an actor or a story can matter more than established star status.This, he feels, also reflects in the way audiences consume cinema today. “The audiences of today, or the kids of today, I think what they’re shouting loudly is that, ‘You can’t handle us.’ You can’t. So even marketing has changed in the sense, don’t tell us whether it’s good or bad, or it’s mind-blowing or whatever. We will discover. Let us discover this. Tell us the story of how it was made,” he says.However, Advani also points to how the industry itself is increasingly influenced by commerce. Having spent more than two decades in the business, he feels filmmaking has moved away from being driven purely by artistic expression and is now often viewed through the lens of numbers and box office. “When I joined filmmaking and knocked on the door of (veteran screenwriter) Saeed Mirza, I wanted to express myself through art and not through box office,” he says.He recalls filmmaker Subhash Ghai’s observation that filmmaking has become like the share market, a comparison that resonates with him. “I think what Subhash Ghai said, I was reading somewhere, he said that filmmaking has become like the share market. When did it become that?” Advani asks.For the filmmaker, the question is not about dismissing the business side of cinema, but about when commercial value began determining how art itself is appreciated. He points to the way audiences evaluate films, performances and music through their commercial success. “When did the appreciation of a great piece of music by A R Rahman in a film called Taal become about… how did that change? How did it become a business?” he asks, adding, “It’s supposed to be art.”