The first quarter of 2015 has been pretty terrible with just a handful of films like Baby, Badlapur, Dum Laga Ke Haisha and NH10 working at the box office, this has been a jolt to Bollywood like never before. Quarter two hasn’t been any impressive either with films struggling to gain even 10% opening. This is for films with some face value at the least because the rest are finding themselves out of theaters after first weekend itself, what with 0% to 5% occupancies greeting them. No wonder, the industry in general is reeling with the kind of failures that have been encountered for an extended period of time.
As a result, the production of many films is halted too. The common refrain is that there is hardly any cash in the industry which can be actually churned around to result in multi-crore extravaganzas to be put together. One wonders though whether the business scenario is actually as bleak as it sounds or is it just a passing phase with better things round the corner.
This is what experts have to say:
Sanjay Gupta – Filmmaker
Do the math with all the recent flops – reduce ATL (Actors n Director fees) by 50% and you break even irrespective of the fate of the film. Adopt this as a model going forward and both box office and reduction in satellite prices won’t affect you. Let them take the other 50% from the profits but not from the producer’s pocket.
Akshaye Rathi – Film exhibitor & distributor
Over the last few years, by increasing ticket prices sharply with every major film, we have alienated a significant chunk of the audience and probably even pushed them towards pirated content, which is blatantly suicidal for the industry. It’s crucial for the entire value chain to get into a huddle and introspect about the things that are going wrong and then work towards a revival from there, before it’s too late.
Girish Johar – Distributor and film business analyst
We, at Essel Vision, truly believe that good stories must be told and made, provided they are economically viable. We believe in partnerships, be it in risk taking or profits. This simple & focused approach has helped us forging not only partnerships but long term associations as well. There would certainly better days ahead.