A hunt is on in Bollywood for a new leading man who can bring the crowds back to Indian movie theaters.
With no new big male star emerging in the past five years, veteran actors from the 1980s and 1990s are still ruling at the box office, where takings have dropped steadily by 8 percent to 10 percent in the past three years.
Industry players believe it is time for a new "star of the masses" to rise in Bollywood, India's prolific Hindi-language film industry which produces more films than Hollywood.
"We are all in search of a new star for Bollywood," said producer-director Vipul Shah.
The last actor to drive movie fans near to hysteria was Hrithik Roshan, who was blooded by his director father Rakesh Roshan in the 1999 hit film Kaho Na Pyar Hai ("Say That You Love Me").
In his early 20s at the time, Roshan became an overnight sensation, with fans mobbing him almost everywhere he went.
For months after his screen debut, streams of fans also waited for hours and hours outside his Mumbai home to get a glimpse of the handsome, athletically built actor.
Hrithik's success was something Bollywood had last seen in the '80s when Aamir Khan, along with former Miss India Juhi Chawla, hit the screens in a tragic romantic flick Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak ("Till The End of Time").
But since the time Hrithik gave producers a brief reminder of
Bollywood's heydays, no other actor or actress has managed to fire the collective imagination of the country's moviegoers.
"A number of boys have been launched since Hrithik's debut, but none drove people crazy the way he did," said producer Vashu Bhagnani, referring to actors like Abhishek Bachchan, John Abraham, Vivek Oberoi, Ritiesh Deshmukh, Tushar Kapoor and Shahid Kapoor.
Five years on and even Hrithik has lost a lot of his star appeal due to his inability to deliver enough blockbusters.
His last solo hit was the 2003 science-fiction flick Koi Mil Gaya ("Someone Found"), a take-off of Steven Spielberg's ET and directed by his father.
Analysts said the industry, known for its candyfloss films and take-offs on Hollywood flicks, continues to be dominated by established male stars Aamir Khan, Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan, Ajay Devgan and Sanjay Dutt -- most of them in their late 30s or early 40s.
"I feel Bollywood produces superstar once in 10 years," Shah said.
"In every decade there is a reign of a superstar, but it takes a lot of time for any actor to reach that status."
In the 1940s, '50s and '60s, three stars ruled the industry -- Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand and Raj Kapoor.
"In the early years even though many actors came, producers and directors had to rely on Kumar, Anand and Kapoor," said Shah. "That's the way it works and the same trend is evident even now, with no new big star in the past six years."
Analysts said lack of strong scripts was also making search for the right face difficult.
"It is just a super bad luck phase that is on in Bollywood. While films are technically rich now, they lack good scripts," said film analyst Komal Nahta.
As far as heroines are concerned, the situation is not so bad.
A series of former beauty pa-geant winners such as Aishwarya Rai, Sushmita Sen, Priyanka Chopra and Lara Dutta are setting the screens on fire along with other big name actresses like Kareena Kapoor, Rani Mukherjee and Preity Zinta.
"There are enough heroines to bring the crowds, but let us not forget that Bollywood is still very much a male dominated industry where legends have always been men ... be it Dilip Kumar, Rajesh Khanna or Amitabh Bachchan," said producer Bhagnani.
RSS