Bad year for Bollywood

A string of flops has left the Hindi film industry bleeding badly

MUMBAI: Out of the 236 movies released so far this year, only about 15 have made it to the hit mark. The alarming number of flops in the year 2007 came as a huge shock, especially because it rained hits in 2006.

By the end of first quarter of the year, Bollywood had already suffered losses to the extent of Rs600 to Rs700 million. Till March, only one film, Guru emerged as a universal hit, with all the other ones like Nikhil Advani’s Salaam-e-Ishq, Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s Eklavya, Ram Gopal Varma’s Nishabd, Vikram Bhatt’s Red, Amrit Sagar’s 1971, Milan Luthria’s Hattrick, Anurag Kashyap’s Black Friday, Deepa Mehta’s Water, Meghna Gulzar’s Just Married, Suneel Darshan’s Shakalaka Boom Boom, hitting the dust. Nishabd and Eklavya turned out to be huge duds. Then Akshay Kumar’s Namastey London was successful, bringing in the much-needed respite.

After July, films like Partner, Chak De India, Heyy Babyy, Bhool Bhulaiya, Jab We Met and the super hit Om Shanti Om attracted audiences, providing a bit of a breather for the distributors.   
 
Amod Mehra, trade analyst, says even then the trend is alarming. He says, “If you notice, apart from Chak De all the other films that have done well are those typical commercial formula films. We seem to have digressed back to the same tried-and-tested formula. People can scream their lungs out saying that script is the king, but the fact remains that the viewer is no longer ready to risk his money for anything that seems unlikely to entertain him, especially since multiplex rates have hit the roof.

Take Om Shanti Om, or Guru. The treatment might be different but they are the same formula commercial movies. Saawariya is not as big a dud as it is made out to be. Though the film was disappointing, as per the expectations of the distributors, as it was a Sanjay Leela Bhansali, it had a decent opening. The first three days of Saawariya were very good. Small films are dying out, thanks to ticket rates and piracy. Now, for a viewer to be remotely interested, either the film has to look entertaining enough or it has to be well publicised.”

For a distributor, it has been a terrible year, says distributor Pankaj Jaisingh. “It’s a really bad situation. Films are flopping left, right and centre. We don’t know where we are going. Business is really bad. The prices of the movies have gone through the roof. Even with few hit movies last year, the producer might have made the money but the distributor just about covered the costs. With corporates entering the field, there is a mad rush amongst distributors and surprisingly, we have stopped thinking about profits, we are more concerned about getting a movie at any cost.”

Jaisinghani says the distributors have lost about 50 per cent of the capital that they have invested in.

“Even with small films like Khoya Khoya Chand and Dus Kahaniyan, there are about 75 per cent losses to the distributor.”

One of the other surprising trends seen is that the viewer is no more concerned about the credibility of the production company. Yashraj’s four movies out of the five released this year bit the dust, perhaps shaking the image of the empire a wee bit.

However, Tushar Dhingra, COO of Adlabs believes that in spite of the string of flops, statistically 2007 was better than last year. He says, “The marketing has been more aggressive and I would say that the quality of films were better than the quantity. If you take films like Hey Baby and Om shanti Om, or even Aaja Nachle, they might not be stellar box office hits, but the fact remains that they have had better weekends. The quality of the movies has improved quite a bit and we need to concentrate on that.”

s_shubha@dnaindia.net