Gear up for filmi hoopla

Bollywood’s gearing up for the release of a slew of big-budget films in the coming few months. And so are the stars, who are leaving ‘no penny unspent’ when it comes to marketing their film and reaching out to the audiences.  

Trade figures say that there’s more money riding in the second half this year as compared to any of the previous years and so is the money on marketing. Trade analysts in fact peg it to almost equalling the amount being spent to make a film and in some cases the marketing budgets have been higher than the actual filmmaking costs. Case in point being the recent releases like Shor, Ragini MMS, Pyar Ka Punchnama amongst others, that industry observers feel became hits largely due to their promotional activities.

“Marketing is the name of the game in Bollywood these days. While earlier the ratio of budgets for film costs versus marketing would be 80-20, till the last year it came to approx 70-30 and this year, it’s been from 60-40 to even 40-60,” says trade pundit Taran Adarsh.

“What began as an exercise to promote a film has of late become a battleground for star-wars of sorts. Quite naturally the stakes have increased drastically since then,” adds a veteran filmmaker.
“We have previous seen how marketing can affect a film right from Om Shanti Om to Ghajini and even before them, and that’s also the reason why the stars are willing to co-operate on that front as well,” explains trade analyst Komal Nahta.

But it is not an encouraging trend, points out Taran, explaining that for the big budget films the marketing budgets itself are about 8 to 10 crore. “It would be far better to invest the money in bettering a product than selling it,” adds Taran. Trade analysts, however,  agree that like it or not, “it is the need of the hour.”