.png)
1 hour ago
5
4 min readHyderabadJul 17, 2026 08:33 PM IST
R Madhavan with son Vedaant.
Actor R Madhavan has remarked that his 20-year-old son Vedaant and his generation have no interest in watching Indian films, whether Tamil, Hindi or anything else produced in the country.
In a conversation with Cinema Express for his upcoming film GDN, based on the life of Coimbatore-born engineer G.D. Naidu, the actor said young audiences have moved entirely to Japanese anime and Korean content, and that the Indian film industry is losing a generation not to a rival but to a completely different ecosystem of storytelling.
“I’ve got one fear I don’t even want to think about. For sure, until now, I’ve earned his respect. Now he’s 20 years old. But if you look at my younger generation, they’re totally disconnected from him,” Madhavan said, referring to himself in the third person. “It’s a big problem. They’re watching Japanese anime, they’re watching Korean content. But they don’t even want to watch our Tamil movies. They won’t go to the theatre to watch Hindi movies or Indian movies either.”
Also Read: Madhavan rues not getting residuals for 3 Idiots, Rang De Basanti: ‘Could’ve fed generations’
Madhavan said the disconnect has been on his mind for years. He recalled a time when Vedaant was six years old and the thought process was simpler. “This six-year-old boy comes up to me, and I’m thinking about how to make a movie for him. He’s gonna watch some movie and then tell me, ‘You’ve done a good job,'” he said. Back then, the worry was about earning his son’s respect. Now the worry is different. Vedaant respects his father, but according to Madhavan, he just does not watch Indian films.
Madhavan acknowledged that the easy path was always available to him. “I believe if I make a commercial film, it’s sure to have at least one hit. Just having that formula is enough to keep us going for many years,” he said. But he chose otherwise. “With all the experiences I’ve had in my life, we can’t really fit them into one movie. That’s what acting is all about. But I never got a chance to really show the depth and quality that acting demands. Then, when that kind of opportunity finally came, I decided that just doing some usual commercial film isn’t something I can do.”
He put the responsibility back on the industry, including himself. “What’s happening in Tamil Nadu is happening all over the world. How empowered are our people? How aware are they? But beyond that, how inspirational are we when we come forward? A storyteller, a director, or an actor, how inspirational are we really?” he said.
Story continues below this ad
GDN is a biographical drama on the life of Gopalaswamy Doraiswamy Naidu, a self-taught inventor and industrialist from Coimbatore who is often called the Edison of India. Naidu, who had no formal engineering education, built India’s first electric motor, attempted to manufacture a car equivalent to the Mercedes in pre-independence Tamil Nadu. Written and directed by Krishnakumar Ramakumar, with the screenplay co-developed by Madhavan, the film is produced by Varghese Moolan Pictures and Tricolour Films, the same team behind Rocketry.
The cast includes Sathyaraj, Jayaram, Priyamani, Dushara Vijayan, Aditi Balan, Vinay Rai, Thambi Ramaiah and Karunakaran, with music by Govind Vasantha and cinematography by Aravind Kamalanathan. The trailer, launched at Kari Motor Speedway in Coimbatore on July 4, positions the film as a story about a man whose ideas were ahead of his time and the institutional resistance he faced for it.
English (US) ·