The Indian film industry is changing, and films no longer have to have a song-and-dance sequence to be successful, Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan said Wednesday.
Khan, who was in London to promote his latest film, told Reuters in an interview that while "Fan" had a theme song, it did not actually feature in the movie and had been used purely for trailers.
Younger filmmakers know that "we don't need to just shove in a song anymore," he said. " ... It'll take a lot of time to take the songs out of us, but every film will have a different requirement."
Bollywood films traditionally have had complex musical scores, and filmmakers have rarely resisted the temptation to insert a song-and-dance sequence into a film. Some films' success rates have been dependent more on the music than the plot.
Khan's latest film, which is being released globally Friday, sees the actor playing a double role in which a look-alike fan is obsessed with a film star.
On Wednesday, Khan revealed a waxwork model dressed as the look-alike fan, Gaurav, at Madame Tussauds museum in central London.
When asked whether he had ever met his look-alike in person, he said many fans often dressed like him.
"They all wear dark glasses so they're kind of similar, and they speak like me, in Kolkata," he said.
The 50-year-old actor said he enjoyed using social media platforms to engage with his admirers. Khan has 19 million followers on Twitter and said he reads 90 percent of the content directed at him.
However, the actor said he had shied away from using other platforms after his daughter criticized his pictures on Instagram, saying he was using too many color filters on his images.
Khan, who has been acting for more than two decades, is regarded as a pioneer in the Indian film industry for experimenting with using graphics and special effects in his films. The makeup for his character Gaurav was done by the same artist who created Brad Pitt's look in the 2008 film "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button."
But when asked about making animated movies, Khan said Bollywood was at least another five to 10 years away from embracing the genre.
"It requires special writing. I think we haven't perfected that art in India. So we need writers and screenplay writers for an animation, I think, from the West," he said.
"Animation in India so far has not done very well. I think we still need to crack the code."
