Creative Producers vs Corporate Distributors in Bollywood

Article by Kabir

So I have managed to write another article on time. Luckily my mood was disturbed all week and ‘Bombay Velvet’ had nothing to do with it (okay it had in bits and pieces). I feel everyone in their tweets talk about collections of opening day, weekend and lifetime business – it’s the newest trend.  It’s like the new social acceptability tool that if you don’t understand or know the collections you ain’t the new cool. Reminds me of my school time, when I was in school I used to watch a lot of Hindi movies (English movies were a bouncer for me due to my slow English understanding skills), so whenever there was a discussion about a Bond film or a newly released Hollywood film, I would blindly agree with what the majority are saying, so that I’m not the odd one out. Social acceptability pressure! These numbers are necessary no doubt but to be concerned only about numbers – Get a life people!

I have never been a fan of Anurag Kashyap’s films or his interviews, (Girl in yellow boots made me throw my boots at him), however I do believe that every film needs a certain breathing space before we go all out and bash it. But again you never give a Slumdog maker a budget of a millionaire. I really do believe in that. So what went wrong with Bombay Velvet? How does a corporate like Fox Star Studios survive such a big loss?  Let’s analyse from the start. The procedure or process from a script being made into a film in any production house is known as “Packaging or Development” and there are specific teams that look into this. The stages as below

First stage gone wrong

The script is approached to a production house. Keeping in mind the story, script, director and actors attached, the corporate decides to allocate a budget.   The budget depends mainly on the directors past, the actors involved and the locations. Here in case of Bombay Velvet the biggest flaw wasn’t the script or actors or even the story, but the budget allocated as per the feasibility of the film. The error is in the business making stage and not at the filming stage. How can one allocate a budget of Rs 100 crore to a director whose films haven’t opened to more than Rs 5 crore? How can one allocate a budget of 100 crore to a genre which is not universally acceptable? If everyone is blaming Anurag Kashyap for such a film, the same blame should be shared by the person who sanctions such projects.

It is an error at the first stage of development and such errors will always damage the film.

The makers of the film are well aware of the fact that Bombay Velvet is bound to lose around 70 crores of its investment. So my point here is why should a Corporate suffer loses alone?  Procedure explained below

A creative producer or production house pitches a project to a corporate. For example

In Bombay Velvet the creative producer or production house is “Phantom Productions”. They may make the film for 65 crores (example) and they sell the film to the corporate company (known as distributor) in this case “Fox Star India” for 80 crores, by doing this the creative studio is liberated of any losses.

A  creative producer like a Illuminati Productions (sold Agent Vinod to Eros) or Excel Entertanment  (Sold Don 2 to Reliance or Zindagi Milegi Na Dobara to Eros) or Dharma Productions (Sold Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani to UTV Motion Pictures) recover the money and get rid of the losses well before the film has released. By doing so, they relieve themselves of the future prospect of the film, although it is due to their vision that the corporate has pumped in money into the project.

My point is since it’s the vision of a creative studio, there should be a clause of a minimum business guarantee from a project, failing which even the creative studio should be held responsible for losses.  For example in case of a Bombay Velvet, if there was a clause that Phantom would be responsible to an extent for the business of the film, it would have helped the entire project.

If such a clause is implemented the creative studios will start being more responsible with the budget of a film and pay more attention to its content. Currently production houses like Phantom deliver one blockbuster in 5 years like Queen and easily get a corporates on board for their forthcoming films (in pipeline as well).

If a individual distributors had distributed Bombay Velvet instead of Fox Star Studios, he would probably never have recovered after suffering a 70 crore loss. The big question is, why should a distributor sole take responsibility for disasters?

Read more from Kabir

• Music rights of Dilwale fetches record price, music label war heats up
• The downside of city multiplexes in India
• The downside of the Hindi Film Industry
• Marketing of Bollywood films is overrated!