‘Crossover in films has to happen internally in India’

Mumbai, Nov 25 (IANS) Filmmaker-producer Karan Johar, who is gearing up for the release of his forthcoming film '2.0' as a distributor, feels that the true crossover in films has to happen internally in India.

Karan said this while interacting with the media at the promotional press conference of '2.0' along with film's lead actor Akshay Kumar and director S. Shankar here on Saturday.

In '2.0', Akshay, who is a huge star in Hindi film industry, is making his debut in Tamil film along with southern superstar Rajinikanth.

When asked if after success of 'Baahubali' and anticipated success of '2.0', more pan-India films will be made wherein actors and technicians from various industry work together, Karan said: "I think the true crossover has to happen internally in India. We keep talking about crossover that the films are going out of the country but I think 'Baahubali' is a true crossover film.

"It's a film made in Telugu which worked very well in all the regions of our country. Similarly, '2.0' has that vision of actually working within the country," he said.

He added that people within the film industry need to encourage the crossover movement.

"We have to encourage those crossover movements. Films in all languages whether it is in Marathi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, have to work all across because that should be the true vision eventually," he said.

'2.0' is a science fiction action film, written and directed by S. Shankar, co-written by B. Jeyamohan, and produced by A. Subaskaran.

The film serves as a sequel to the 2010 Tamil film "Enthiran", and features Rajinikanth reprising the roles of Dr. Vaseegaran and Chitti, alongside Akshay Kumar and Amy Jackson.

The film is set for a worldwide theatrical release on November 29.