Bollywood’s Business: Time For The Mumbai Film Industry To Introspect

As the country was in the throes of celebrating the 75th anniversary of its Independence, fear and trepidation gripped its world-renowned and awe-inducing film entertainment industry – popularly referred to as Bollywood. There was mayhem on the Bollywood box office floor, with two of its darlings, Aamir Khan and Akshay Kumar being dealt killer punches and fatal blows that virtually flung them out of Bollyverse, if ever there is one. Two of their major offerings, ‘Laal Singh Chaddha’ made with a budget of Rs 190-200 crores and ‘Raksha Bandhan’ costing Rs 70 crores opened to below-par responses at the domestic box office window and continued through the weekend with dwindling collections.

What sent everyone into a worrying tizzy was that even the extended first weekend periods, that coincided with holidays for the festival of Raksha Bandhan and Independence Day failed to stem their downward spiral. At the time of writing, Lal Singh Chaddha had a total of Rs. 55 crores, with unintended pit-stops after its second weekend while the Akshay Kumar starrer has lazily ambled along to collect Rs. 41.50 crores.

In 2022, the Hindi film industry has seen only a handful of successes in Bollywood – The Kashmir Files, Gangubhai Kathiawadi, and Bhool Bhulaiya 2 all bringing a combined total of Rs 567.92 crores to the domestic box office bounty. 2019, the year before Covid-19, saw gross box office collections from theatrical earnings for Hindi films at Rs 4,950 crore according to an EY-FICCI report, the highest ever collected for Hindi films in a year. There was also a great boost provided by OTT and digital as well as collections and overseas theatricals leading to an overall increase in the Indian film segment by over 10% that year. Those figures slid downwards, with two years of Covid-induced inertia and many big-star films turning out to be box office duds. There has been a slew of reasons being attributed to the current ‘crisis’ in Bollywood. Considering the impact that Covid-19 had on the industry with the fatigue/fear factor, even the tepid response to the advance booking for Laal Singh Chaddha and Raksha Bandhan was met with a sigh of resignation by many within Mumbai filmdom.

Oh, The End Is Nigh, Still #Boycott This And That

To make things worse the boycott calls given by sections in the social media took over the pre-release hype of the two films, especially for Laal Singh Chaddha, pressurising its lead star Aamir Khan to come out with fervent pleas to everyone to watch the film and even clarifying the seemingly controversial statements he had made a few years ago. Did the #BoycottLalSinghChaddha storm raking over social media hurt the film’s prospects? While a few industry watchers believe that this did have an impact on the film, it is indeed quite hard to believe the assumption.

“These boycott calls at best only have a 5-10% impact on any film, beyond that it is the merit of the film that decides its fate. Most films on which some kind or the other boycott calls were made were not good films that could entertain the audience, if they were terrific films then surely, they would have done huge business,” clarifies Akshaye Rathi, a leading film exhibitor.

One could surmise that if Akshay’s Raksha Bandhan had done some decent business, there would have been some credence to the impact of the boycott calls on Laal Singh Chaddha, and that surely was not the case.

Many film industry pundits, trade experts, distributors, and exhibitors disappointed with the performances of the two films have already hit the panic button calling for production houses to retreat to their drawing boards to avert a similar fate for impending Hindi releases. Was the usual whipping boy, OTT the reason? While these and other issues need to be looked at, the writing on the wall for the Hindi Film Industry is loud and clear, it is time to wake up and smell some real ‘Koffee’.

To begin with, are these doomsday predictions and almost dystopian views of the ‘end of Bollywood’ justified? Mumbai Film Industry veteran, Amit Khanna disagrees. “The debacle of the two films is nothing unusual, this keeps happening every year, there has been a drought at the box office, and people expected that these two (or at least one of them) would finally end it, but that simply did not happen. We will have to wait for that one elusive blockbuster,” he says. Rathi agrees with this view. “It is not a crisis, I would see it as a learning phase. What really has happened is that in the last two years the way we consume entertainment has changed at a certain level. We seem to be in a position right now where we are shooting at the wrong goalposts. Audiences are now privy to all kinds of content and choose smartly, we need to internalize this quickly, learn from this and I am sure we will emerge stronger from this sooner than later.”

Is there an almost unreal fatal attraction of the English media with Bollywood and do these alarmist declarations point to the general malaise of our media, their hunger to incessantly sensationalise and foam at the mouth? Khanna agrees, saying, “the English media is far too obsessed with Hindi films, their budgets along with their profit and loss equations.”

Freakonomics Adaptation Needed, Bollywood Style

The double jolt will surely force Bollywood to relook at the current lopsided economics of filmmaking. Many justifiably feel there is a dire need to rework and overhaul the whole process from the initial ideation of the story, content and stars to the final shot that is canned, a serious hand-on-heart rejig of the gargantuan costs that go into mounting Hindi movies. Currently, huge costs of films rocket beyond stratospheric levels once the obnoxious prices of its lead actors are added to it, as a first step their fees must be reined in. So, can the present situation then offer an opportunity to address the skewed numbers that go into film production? Here, Khanna agrees, “the present shakeout was necessary in a sense. Stars taking away 70% of the overall pie cannot work. The pie must be apportioned equitably; the whole Bollywood business ethic must be reimagined.”

Rathi concurs, “This correction was long overdue, while the producers scrape through, distributors and exhibitors lose money, but the lead actor pockets a huge pay packet. Everyone in the value chains needs to earn their fair share of the money, a single entity (the actor) cannot ‘only’ gain at the cost of the other equally important stakeholders in the film eco-system, the producers, writers, technicians and so on.” Importantly, Khanna is of the view that the overall pie has to rise to make the Hindi film business viable. He adds, “The present equation of 20 per cent films giving 80 per cent of the revenue needs to change, also keep in mind that today Hindi films constitute less than 15 per cent of the entertainment revenue stream.”

Rathi is hopeful that the consistent failures of stars to deliver their stardom will change things. “The real job of the stars is to ensure that their face on a movie poster ensures an opening. If they cannot assure this, then definitely there is a need for a relook at the kind of fee that they charge,” he says.

Blaming It On OTT? How Big Is The Pie Really?

The prevalence and preference of movie-going audiences towards the OTT platform is a common reason many ascribe to the way new Hindi films have fared. Has OTT, the new kid on the block overstayed its welcome, that next-door neighbour’s cute little spoilt brat that the stars want to give a proper whack to but end up mollycoddling, why, because everyone is watching. Rathi agrees, “We need to get people from the convenience of their homes out to the cinemas by tweaking the content that is being offered, design it in a unique manner that aligns to the theatre format. Efforts are needed to tap into elements that are unique to a cinema hall to bring back the crowds who will clap, laugh, cheer and cry along with what they are viewing.”

Khanna presents the issue through another lens.

Presently that number has come down by half, once the curve rises and touches back to 30, it would be fine he says. The reason for the dismal business of movies in Bollywood and other regional film industries too is huge ticket prices at the box office window. This coupled with the sumptuous banquet of global and indigenous content at the ready provided by OTT has indeed, many believe, killed the movie star. Khanna alludes to a paradigm shift that is taking place in terms of costs that add up when someone decides to visit a cinema, especially in an urban setup. “Nowadays with the average cost of a ticket being around Rs 200, how many afford this, multiply it with the number of family members or friends,” he says. A simple fun day out at the movies earlier is now akin to a jump scare with skyrocketing costs of living, the choice for a common citizen is easy. It just cannot be the Salman Khan/Katrina Kaif-starrer one day at Maratha Mandir and the Alia Bhatt one the next at INOX, it is roti or onions today and some savings for a swill of a glass of milk if one is lucky for the weekend. Rathi however sees this differently, “It is not that the audiences do not want to come to the cinemas, after the Covid lull when the ticket windows opened, within 40 days we had two huge successes in KGF 2 and RRR.”

The normal moviegoer has become picky, wanting the maximum bang for their buck. Rathi agrees, “Audiences have become selective and want the film fraternity to respect their time, money and effort and once we do that with the content that we provide they will be back.”

Fast Forward From The Past, And The Crore Club Cliques

Changes have been a reluctant constant that the Hindi film industry has been forced to embrace over the past decades like their female leads did warming up to the over-bearing, wicked and loud mother-in-law caricatures in the end. The era of multi-starrers on which Bollywood trapezed along ended at some point in the dawn of this millennium, the tag now aligning itself more with the political party spectrum of today in a spectacular fashion. The adrenaline rush many felt when an Amitabh-Shashi-Shatrughan Sinha, a Dharam-Jeetu-Vinod Khanna or a Sunny-Jackie-Suniel Shetty starrer would release is now frozen in history. This constellation of stars soon gave way to that one single lodestar who spawned various crore-clubs. Zia Us Salam in his book ‘Delhi 4 Shows – Talkies of Yesteryear’ recounts how the blockbuster ‘Sholay’ (a movie that didn’t collect well early) only had an initial two-week run in 1975 at Liberty cinema in New Delhi but went on to have a ten-year run three years later. Well, these are anecdotal gems that do not resonate in today’s day and age.

Deriding the 100-200-crore club madness that was and is still in vogue, Khanna dons a Dickensian Ebenezer Scrooge silhouette and says these crore clubs are pure humbug. “I said this in my book last year. We have the largest film industry in the world, but it only contributes to about two percent or even less to the total global box office receipts.” True then the vacuousness of it all, the 100-crore club inaugurated by the Aamir Khan starrer ‘Ghajini’ today turns him away in royal fashion with a stark ‘no entry’ sign at its door fourteen years later.

Lessons From The South?

Another common refrain heard since ‘Baahubali’, and its sequel and recently after ‘RRR’ has been how more professional and realistic the southern film industry is in terms of planning and execution of their projects and their far better success rates. Quizzed on this, Khanna says that in terms of total business their success percentage as compared to the Hindi film industry is only slight. Interestingly he reminds us that this phenomenon of films from the south doing well vis a vis those from Mumbai is not recent. “Suddenly our mainstream media has awakened to this reality,” he observes.

Here again, the attention is only on the successes that come out of the south. This year Prabhas had a damp squib in ‘Radhey Shyam’, Chiranjeevi, and Ram Charan with ‘Acharya’ and even Mohanlal’s ‘Aaraattu’ had a tough time collecting just to name a few. Supreme failures stalk the film industry in the south too, just that only the smash hits are put up as signposts for everyone to see, the ones that perish are just buried and not talked about.

One factor however that really distinguishes the southern film fraternity from Mumbai is the incredible sway of the fans of their superstars. The fan frenzy for an NTR Jr, Vijay, Suriya or Mammootty continues unabated even today, it ensures that their films get an astounding opening at the ticket window for the initial three to four days. Post that, it is dependent on the film itself, whether it gallops along or falls by the wayside. This ‘fandom’ trend is on the wane in Bollywood, where once an Amitabh, Sunny, Aamir, Salman, or Shahrukh starrer was guaranteed an initial only because their raucous fans thronged cinemas ensured hefty footfalls.

Content-wise too Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, and Kannada films have grown by leaps and bounds adhering themselves to pan-Indian audiences' tastes and sensibilities. They have also ventured to tell stories of the oppressed with concepts mirroring the lived realities of people along with movie spectacles wowing audiences across both the cinemas and OTT platforms with their top-notch VFX capabilities and earthy story-telling. In the eighties and nineties, the southern film industry to a large extent was known for films with garish costumes, over-the-top characterisations and loud music. Jeetendra, Sridevi, and Jaya Prada would star in a K Raghavendra Rao or a T Rama Rao production and most of them would do well in Mumbai and across India as well.

Today, the industry has evolved to a large extent raising the bar across all languages and even doing roaring business with their dubbed Hindi versions. Thanks to television channels like B4U and SET MAX that show these movies 24/7, especially from Telugu and Tamil, faces like Allu Arjun, Nayanthara, Suriya, Samantha Ruth Prabhu, and Ram Charan are all quite well-known in the north. The same however cannot be said of the south where they would surely struggle to recognize a Kartik Aryan, Varun Dhawan or Vicky Kaushal. So much so that Allu Arjun, Keerthy Suresh, or Yash can quote exorbitantly and still have brands lining up to sign them and while a suave Dulquer Salmaan, or an uber-cool Parvathy or Roshan Mathew from Kerala can seamlessly integrate with their young counterparts from Mumbai giving knockout performances along the way.

The Trolls Are Us

This then leads to another thought, are Bollywood studios and producers busy obsessing about ticking the right boxes in an all-important checklist? A tick here to see that the story doesn’t ruffle feathers somewhere, a cut there to please the powers that be, the list could go on. A question then for all our inner soulless trolls of frail limbs and swollen ogre-like skulls, on a hunt. How would Laal Singh Chaddha have looked if it was made, say a decade ago? How different would have been its canvas if Ram (Aamir Khan) the artist protagonist of ‘Taare Zameen Par’ had used his brush strokes and colour palette uninhibitedly?

Which of the forthcoming releases then will be able to upend the current trend at the Bollywood box office? Will it be Liger, Brahmastra or Vikram Vedha? If customers at the box office are in a cheerful mood, could they all do well? The critical variable of the sea change in viewership habits however cannot be lost on the Mumbai film Industry. The modus operandi must be altered, everyone will need to script things differently if the sun has to shine again at the box office.

Anand Mathew is a social development consultant based in New Delhi and writes on films.

The views expressed here are those of the author’s and do not necessarily represent the views of BQ Prime or its editorial team.