By Kavita Mistry 
“One of the reasons why I did The Diplomat was because there was a script lying on my table one morning in my producer’s cabin. I opened it and I read it, and when I read it, I just thought, ‘Wow, wow, wow.’ And I thought to myself, there’s going to be a point where it’s going to dip. You usually get disappointed when you read a script or watch a film, but it just kept going on fantastic,” John shares.
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Without telling anyone, John acted on his instinct. He said, “I called up the person who sent the script and I said, ‘I want to do this film.’ That was my instinctive reaction. Why? The writing. Ritesh Shah wrote that film, and I say, ‘Listen, it’s written so well, and if we get a responsible director on board and marry the two, you could possibly get something decent enough.’”
He further emphasizes his connection to the story. Adding, “I read the script, I loved the script. It’s a human story. I did it because I loved what I read. But I loved what I read.”
John went on to detail how producers’ factor in social media and the audience’s dwindling attention spans in today’s cinema. “We’re scared. As producers, I know when we do films, we say ‘Oh my god, the audience is going to pick up the phone, and the whole cinema hall will light up. This scene is too slow. Let’s bombard it with background music just to hold their attention,” he explained.
“I think we’re not giving enough credit to our audience. They will come back. We always talk about being flippant, but they’re far more socially conscious,” he added.
Catch up for more such candid conversations on In the Ring with Filmfare.
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