Actor Vijay Deverakonda spoke at a session titled The Power of Cinema at the first World Audio Visual Entertainment Summit (WAVES) in Mumbai. Talking to Kareena Kapoor and Karan Johar, Vijay spoke about why Hollywood is a ‘soft power’ and how he believes Brad Pitt only earns a hundred times more money than him for this reason. (Also Read: Why were Allu Arjun's Pushpa and Yash's KGF bigger successes in Hindi than Telugu and Kannada? Nagarjuna has the answer)

Vijay Deverakonda on Hollywood vs Indian cinema

Vijay spoke at the session about how everyone speaking English has become a ‘soft power’ for the West. “As an actor, a lot of times I’ve been very angry. I don’t know how to say this, I hope this does not get me into trouble, but I feel we need to expand our kingdom. That all of us are conversing in English is a big soft power win for the West because they came in hundreds of years ago and made sure all of us were speaking and writing in their language. Now it’s too late to backtrack,” he said

He then brought up Brad as an example, giving his reasons why he might be earning more money than him, “Because some buggers did this 200-300 years ago for whatever purpose, now Hollywood has the biggest budgets and directors because all of us know and watch films in English. If I do a film and Brad Pitt does a film, he will get paid 100x more than I just because more people are watching his language. Which is not my fault, but the fault of some guys who went and spread that language.”

Vijay even said that if Indians had been ‘more proactive,’ maybe the world would’ve been speaking Indian languages, claiming, “I feel if our ancestors were more proactive and made the world speak in Hindi or Telugu, we would all be…I have a bit of a grouse. Cinema is one thing that keeps us close to our language.”

About WAVES 2025

PM Narendra Modi inaugurated the four-day event, WAVES 2025, in Mumbai on Thursday. Numerous panels are planned for the four days featuring celebrities like Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan, Rajinikanth, Chiranjeevi, Allu Arjun, Deepika Padukone, Alia Bhatt, Ranbir Kapoor and others.

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