The Great
Bollywood Tamasha
The Business of Bollywood has
changed rapidly in the post-liberalization era of mass consumerism. Gone are
the days when Jubilee Kumars, Kapoors, Khannas and Bachchans would celebrate Silver
Jubilee (25 week run) or Golden Jubilee (50 week run) Hits. Today’s Bollywood
celebrates weekend hits. Yes, all that a movie needs, in order to recover its
budget is to run for any length between 1 weekend and 1 week. If a movie runs
for a 2nd week successfully, it crosses the new Holy Grail of the
turnstiles – ‘Rs. 100 crore nett.’. For an industry that has for long been
criticized for lacking originality and for brazenly ‘lifting’ or ‘being
inspired by’ or legally ‘remaking’ films from the ‘South’, this new trend should
have engendered a new breed of cinema. But unfortunately this has given them
license to churn out more trash than substance.
Bollywood has long suffered the
image smear that financers with dubious reputations bring with them. With the
studio system in Bollywood having collapsed, only a few established movie
production houses remained - Yash Chopra, Subhash Ghai, Rajshri, to name a few.
The title of producer would hang loosely on anyone ranging from businessmen to
front-men of Dons, operating either from Mumbai or from overseas. Films were a
good way to make quick returns or in the worst case, to get rid of excess cash
and to schmooze with beauty. But that was still pre-liberalization, license-Raj
India, where everything was centrally controlled and among other things,
channels of entertainment were in short supply. It was either the ‘good old’
Govt. run DD or a local live act or the comfort of the local single-screen
cinema. The Indian was starved for entertainment content.
The economics of Bollywood movie
making changed in the 90s due to two parallel forces – Ram Gopal Varma in urban
India and Mithun Chakraborty in semi-urban and rural India.
Ram Gopal Varma, a maverick
director from the ‘South’ shot to prominence with his seminal ‘Shiva’, a
powerful story of a young man who stands up to the local crime syndicate in his
college and city. Upon his successful cross-over to Bollywood from Telugu-wood,
with ‘Rangeela’, Varma started what was called ‘the factory’. The factory was a
group of young directors backed by a producer, who would make movies at a quick
pace. Some were made by the boss himself with larger budgets and canvas, while
many were made by the newbies who were keen on filming hitherto unexplored
subjects. Varma was the producer and gave freedom to his young charges to make
movies such as ‘Shool’, a movie that explored the difficulty of being honest in
the Bihari heartland. Good actors who were not yet celebrities like Manoj
Bajpai or fading actresses like Urmila Matondkar and Raveena Tandon were chosen
to work on these movies that were shot in a short span of time, at low budgets
and released in quick succession. The
costs were spread and the profits accrued to the factory.
Mithun Chakraborty, a 3-time
National Award winning actor and a success of the disco-inspired Bollywood era
of the 80s had retired to the hills to focus on his Monarch Hotel. In the 90s,
Mithun’s Dream Factory produced a slew of movies that were shot in Ooty and
nearby locations. The targets were semi-urban and rural centers that would not
figure in the distribution radar of big films. Mithun released a staggering 30
films in 1998 and 1999 combined, at a rate of 1 film every 3 weeks. Needless to
say, his model worked even though some of his movie titles like ‘Cheetah’,
‘Jallad’ and ‘Ravan Raaj’ made you squirm.
While this happened at the
production end of things, another development was afoot on the demand side –
cable television. With licenses given to cable operators to offer a multitude
of TV channels to the hungry Indian, both domestic as well as international
groups like Zee, Star network and Sony entered Bollywood’s scared space. Now
you could enjoy tens of channels, some of which played new and old Hindi movies
and also Hindi soaps that were elongated and exacerbated versions of Bollywood family
dramas. In the language of the economist, Bollywood had to compete with
substitute products. One noticeable trend in the 90s was the number of parties
that were thrown to celebrate milestones that were passé to the previous
generation. A silver jubilee now became 25 days instead of weeks.
The model of the mavericks had to
become mainstream now for profitability to be achieved. A variety of Bollywood
players embraced the factory model. The corporatization of Bollywood was
something Amitabh Bachchan tried his hand at doing with his ABCL in the
mid-90s, but he failed to execute profitably and had to file for his company’s
bankruptcy. But there are others that have had much success with this.
Production Houses and
Distributors started evolving into entertainment business companies that made
films, distributed them and also licensed content to cable television and a
variety of digital properties on the internet. Production houses such as Yash
Raj and Mukta Arts that would hitherto focus on big films made by their
owner-directors like Yash Chopra, or Subhash Ghai respectively, now started
producing smaller budget films and also embraced distribution of other’s films
and of their own. Yash Chopra’s son Aditya has directed only 2 movies in a
near-20 year career since 1994’s ‘Dilwale Dulhaniya Lejayenge’ but has produced
over 30 since. Subhash Ghai, a prolific film maker in the 80s and 90s has
produced 24 movies since the year 2000 but has directed only 2 of them.
Entities like Tips that started
out distributing LPs and cassettes entered film production. Companies like Eros
that were pure-play distribution companies, have also entered film production,
as have corporate players like Anil Ambani whose Reliance Pictures is a key
distributor and producer. Star-kids like Karan Johar have revived their
father’s production house Dharma Productions, using this model and Ekta Kapoor
has successfully entered the fray through the side door of television with her
Balaji Telefilms, which is today a listed company. Farhan Akhtar and Ritesh
Sidhwani (Excel Entertainment), Aamir Khan (Aamir Khan Productions), Anil
Kapoor (Anil Kapoor Productions), Akshay Kumar (Hari Om Productions) and hold
your breath – John Abraham (John Abraham productions that made Vicky Donor as its
first film) have all jumped the bandwagon.
Along with this transition, the
economics of movie making also changed. By selling music rights to a music
distribution company, satellite rights to a TV channel and domestic and
overseas distribution rights to a distribution company, a producer can recover
anywhere between 100 to 50% of the cost of production of his film and even be
in profit before the Friday of the release. Now, all that is needed to recover
the left over portion is for the film to run for 1 weekend or 1 week. If a
producer with deep pockets, who is also a distributor, can afford it, he can
distribute thousands of prints and recover the amount with even 50-60%
occupancy over a single weekend. Shah Rukh Khan’s Ra.One released with over
2000 prints worldwide across all languages. His 170-crore magnum opus broke
even.
The magic of this statistic has
also been influenced by the rise of multiplexes and multi-brand retail in
India. The multiplex arrived in the new millennium as a collection of smaller
theatres that could screen 10 different movies at a time, 5 shows a day. The
customer experience had food and beverage to go with comfortable seating, clean
and neat movie halls with sound proof walls and Dolby Digital blaring out
everything with excellent clarity. The upwardly mobile Indian middle class
embraced it. With multi-brand retail, arrived the shopping mall. In every nook
and corner of urban and tier-2 India, malls abound, almost always with a
multiplex embedded within. Now, the mall becomes not just a shopping center,
but a hangout place for the young ‘uns, a family outing spot or just a time
pass spot for anyone who has time to kill. The substitute for Bollywood had
moved from cable television to other forms of time-pass entertainment.
Now Bollywood films are just one
of the options to the 21st century Indian who can choose from TV,
IPL, Malls, Video-Game parlors, Go-Karting zones, pubs, restaurants and a slew
of other entertainment options. In order to look for that 1 weekend of magic,
Bollywood turned to marketing – or more specifically film promotion.
Film promotion is the set of
activities that are intended to inform and influence an audience to go and
watch the movie. In the earlier generation of Bollywood, films were marketed
with hand painted bill boards and posters that were placed at strategic places.
Newspapers would carry information about upcoming releases as would theatres. Film
Magazines like Filmfare and Star Dust would feature the top stars and also
carry tid bits of information on new film releases and would be used as PR
channels by movie makers. Today, with the flood of information on the internet
and on the street, it is hard for a film to jostle for space in a consumer’s
mind. Film promotion as a discipline in itself has evolved enormously over the
last 2 decades or so.
Earlier, actors and models
occupied separate spaces. Rarely would a Vinod Khanna cross over and do a
Cinthol ad or a Sri Devi a Lux ad. In the 90s, Shah Rukh Khan was the first
person to break this glass wall between the 2 roles of actor and model, when he
started endorsing Hyundai and became the brand ambassador for the first company
to challenge Maruti’s monopoly of the Indian 4-wheeler market. Some criticized
him, many admired him, but what he did made people realize that the actor is
also a brand that can live in a consumer’s mind not just through his film, but
through the product he endorses. Advertising centered on the film’s lead actor
became an effective channel for film promotion.
Raj Kapoor and Dev Anand had
taken a delegation from Bollywood to the USSR with great success in the 50s.
Since then Amitabh Bachchan has gone on a few world tours and filled up eminent
stadia like Wembley. In the 90s and early 2000s, a new trend of organized world
tours started emerging with groups of stars and starlets being taken on these
stage performance tours to a single country like the USA or to multiple
countries where the Indian diaspora abounded. The idea of going on a
promotional tour for a film emerged from these tours.
Now a set of film stars and the
director would go from city to city and spend a few hours interacting with the
audience telling them about their new film. Aamir Khan, an innovator in film
promotion started this trend with ‘Lagaan’. He not only played ‘Lagaan’-
inspired cricket matches at cricket stadia around the country but continued to
do so even after the film was released. The seeds were sown for theme-based
promotions, inspired by the theme of the film. Now promotional tours and association with events
relevant to theme of the film became the norm. The trend of using traditional
forms of film promotions like interviews or cover shoots of the hero-heroine
continued as well.
With ‘Lagaan’, the seeds were
also sown for the master to showcase his latent talent at film promotion. It is
not a co-incidence that his films always have innovative and trend-setting
promotions that others merely follow. In the 2000s, film promotion became more
multi-dimensional than before with the addition of the ‘brand-partner’, a
company that would synergistically align with the theme of the film to help its
brand and that of the film. This was limited not only to traditional brands
like food, drink and clothing, but also digital brands like MSN, Yahoo and
others.
The turn of the century also
fostered the internet revolution. Bollywood borrowed the micro-site concept
that Hollywood uses effectively. Now every movie had a micro-site where fans
could go and watch behind the scene pics, movie promotional pics, audio and
video content and also interact with the actors. Aamir Khan, his latent
promotional talents stirred with ‘Lagaan’ used MSN for ‘Mangal Pandey’, his
next film. A look-alike contest was launched with MSN where people could use
Mangal Pandey digital props like the long hair and handle bar moustache,
superimpose it on their pictures and send it back to be judged. The winner was
promised a flight to Mumbai, a meeting with Khan and other goodies.
For ‘Rang De Basanti’, Khan visited college
campuses to bring out the youth-oriented theme of the film. He plays a
hanger-on who doesn’t know what to do with himself, in the film. Coca-Cola tied
up with the producers to introduce a ‘Piyo Sar Uthake’ to induce pride in the
customer. Provogue brought out a clothing line, in keeping with the mood and
message of the film. Airtel’s ‘Express Yourself’ was a tagline that aligned
with the film and the actors visited a Delhi Campus to promote this very
message. Out of the 25 crore production budget of this film, UTV spend a
whooping 10 crore on its promotion – a 40% share as compared to the usual 5%
typically employed. The film grossed nearly 100 crore worldwide.
The brand association bandwagon
saw innovative strategies by other films such as ‘Bunty aur Babli’ which had
the protagonists Abhishek Bachchan and Rani Mukherjee read prime time news on
NDTV in order to promote their film.
With ‘Ghajini’, promotional took
off on another plane, as Ghajini-inspired haircuts were given by Aamir Khan to
fans around the country. Radio Mirchi invited calls from people who wanted to
line up for the cut. Mannequins replicating his sculpted look were placed in
multiplexes all around the country. Using viral marketing, the film’s microsite
started a ‘Find Ghajini’ campaign which would challenge the visitor to play the
role of Aamir and to find Ghajini using a set of clues. Samsung, a brand that
Khan endorses launched a range of Ghajini edition phones. The film turned out
to be a box office smash and grossed 190 crore worldwide.
Even for a small budget film like
‘Delhi Belly’, a film which faced a lot of criticism before its release due to
its abusive language, Khan brought out a series of ‘inverse marketing’ television
ads with the protagonists of the film actually asking the audience not to see
the film because it had words like bleep and words like bleep and other words
like bleep. His wife Kiran Rao shot a set of music videos for the songs of the
film which were licensed to MTV and other music channels to play out. A small
budget film, ‘Delhi Belly’ went on to gross nearly 100 crore worldwide. He did
the same with ‘Dhobi Ghat’ where he told people not to throng the theatres to
watch him, because he wanted them to go based on the perceived merit of the
film, not his own. Made on a budget of 10 crore, the movie went on to make 14
crore, a good performance for an artsy movie.
In keeping with the satirical
theme of ‘Peepli Live’, Khan introduced a TV promo which poked fun at him. A
reporter was broadcasting from a fictional village of Peepli from a shop which
had biscuit and wafer packets with Aamir Khan’s imagery on them. She says that
Aamir Khan will end up selling biscuits and wafers with his name if this film
doesn’t do well. Once she goes off air, she is shown telling the shop keeper
that Aamir Khan must be mad to make a film like this. The film grossed 3 times
its budget.
With innovations such as these,
that have spawned a countless remakes, film promotion today is a well-oiled and
multi-player ecosystem with companies across retail, automotive, publishing,
internet, broadcast, print and social media working together to promote a film.
Nice post Srini!
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