Affluenza
Bouncing back, Bollywood style
HINDOL SENGUPTA
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The industry may be going through a rough patch but stars, directors and even singers, are not losing any money. They are just finding different ways of earning more…
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The world’s a stage: Markets everywhere... Photo: G.P. Sampath Kumar
A friend of mine and I have been thinking of starting a production house for a bit. In the last few weeks, we have been hunting for money and hunting for actors to take that money and act out our dream script.
It’s a funny time to be meeting actors in Hindi cinema. For the first time since the late 1990s, the industry that more or less breezed through the financial troubles post 9/11, is seeing real jitters. After years of ever increasing actor salaries — when we regularly heard of stars taking 20 crores, even 40 crores in one count, to do one film — the boom is finally over.
The swagger of stardom, while still as swinging before hysterical fans, has faded before tough talking producers and financers. Some of India’s biggest production houses like Yashraj, UTV, Percept and Eros are said to be renegotiating every contract drawn in the last one year, for the next two years.
Different experience
Some suggest that star and director salaries are being halved, cut by two-thirds sometimes. But even as this is being reported, what we found in our personal experience was rather funny.
In reality, Bollywood stars are not losing anything. Nothing. They are just, to use a much-abused word, restructuring their payment model. Already, even before the recession hit us, stars and even some top directors were taking a large chunk of the profits, things like overseas revenues or distribution rights, as compensation for their work apart from the flat fee.
What is happening now is that more than ever, a large chunk of actors, directors, music directors, sometimes even singers are taking a chunk of the film’s overall revenues. So suddenly, in the middle of a conversation, just at the point when a schizophrenic father is telling the invalid son (the script sounds a little bizarre, doesn’t it? Well, that’s us!) he might have murdered the mother, a potential producer says: “A new market is opening up in Africa.”
Now this is a new one. We have heard of markets in America, in England, I have seen teenage boys singing Shah Rukh love songs in Berlin, but this Africa idea was unknown.
The producer who says he thinks our film is worth a budget of around Rs. fourteen and a half crores (the “half” supposedly will be spent to give a “colour feel” to the film, all grey tones says the knowledgeable producer) believes that dark, sordid, crime tales would do well in countries like Nigeria, South Africa and even Sudan where supposedly demand for Indian films is soaring.
“If,” said the producer wistfully, “we get Salman. You know I have known Salman from the time he was a boy. Like running around in shorts type of boy,” he clarified, in case boy was an unknown entity to me. “If we get Salman, we can even offer him the Africa territory and Dubai and the Gulf. He is a big hit there like Shah Rukh is in the U.S. It will add to Salman’s package.”
This talk of packages is new in Bollywood. I was always under the impression that only people with lowly jobs, like me for instance, bother about packages. Clearly, that is changing.
In times of slowdown, the stars have restructured the way they make money.
Advertising budgets are changing dramatically and companies are willing to fork out much less for that winning smile (the crooked smile made to look winning from that low angle?). So stars are now looking at adding brands to their “portfolio” so that the quantum of money remains intact.
Also, Bollywood big names started — so they think today — the right trend in the last couple of years of producing their own films. This eliminated the biggest cost in a film — the star! And the stars could get the biggest chunk of the revenues — from distribution and sale of rights.
Not just the stars
But now, it’s not just the stars. We met a singer. Someone I think has one of the best female voices in the industry with a range that moves from coquettish-sexy to bed-thumping orgasmic to Rajshri-demure to post-saas-bahu weepy.
She said, I want Internet rights; this again was new, I had no idea that there were rights, any rights, on the Net.
She said: “I can sell the Internet rights separately. They can be remixed and played in discos. There is a big market in Russia.”
Visions of beefy oligarchs in P-Diddy suits, slugging potent vodka and shaking their butt to Bollywood while trying to a buy a football club in Europe swam before my eyes.
Later, thirsting for vodka, I ordered Stolichnaya.
My friend, who is usually quiet, later went to meet a dialogue writer. Ten minutes into the meeting, the dialogue writer, scratching his nose (as my friend recalled) suggested that our script be also turned into a graphic novel.
“There is a big demand,” he said. “And you have to put T and A in it, lots of tits and ass! That’s what people like in graphic novels.”
My friend tried to turn the conversation by talking about the importance of silence in the script but the dialogue writer would have none of that.
Knowledge of the market
He was clear: “You know Michael Adams? He is a big believer of the nipple count. How many in how many minutes on FTV! That’s how graphic novels work. And we can divide the revenues and also the international rights of the book.”
As it so happens, we are still roaming around with our script. Next up perhaps we will try meeting a star. In Mumbai, everyone knows someone who knows Mr. Bachchan. The trick, it seems, is to get invited to a party where he, perhaps his wife, is coming. So that’s the route we are trying to follow. Someone who knows this more than us has said that the best way is to hang out with a designer.
My friend, who is eternally negative, believes that designer will want a cut on the clothing deal. Ten per cent on clothes from the movie sold at a friendly neighbourhood mall.
The writer is Editor, Lifestyle, UTVi.
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