The Dirty Picture... 5th Biggest opening of 2011

It has been dirty for past few weeks and the results have been magnificent. The movie has opened as 5th biggest opening by beating Singham. Many will say that it was all about sex and thats why people went and watched it. But i would like to remind then that there have been too many movies based completely on sex like 4, girlfriend etc. and none of them was even able to survive for even one day at box office. The idea of the movie was very big and indeed innovative which made a 12 cr. movie profitable on its second day of release.
Also the marketing of the movie worked very well for it. Never they did shy away from the fact that this is a movie based upon sex. Even Vidya Balan in her interviews stated that this is 'A' certified film and not meant for family audiences.
Also few things like Vidya Balan's KBC appearance and Emran Hashami's Patna and Lucknow city visit worked brilliantly for the film. Infact, UP, Rajasthan and Bihar has proved to be the cow belt for this film.
We should not get surprised if this movie touches 100 cr. mark as this kind of opening was also too shocking/surprising for many.

Good news... Aishwarya sneezed twice...

Yeah... you heard it right. Aishwarya Rai sneezed twice... according to our own well respected Bhole Baba it’s a really good sign. Baba has confirmed that the Bachchan couple will have a son. 

What a world we are living in. Are we this insane that we need to know every single detail of Aishwarya Rais pregnancy? The media is daily reporting something about Aishwarya Rai and how Amitabh Bachchan is furious about it. But is this a fault of Media? I tried to analyze that how always the Bachchan family become the victim of Media. How their wedding and everthing personal they do become a national issue. I mean i have seen only Bachchan family who gets so much harassed by media. There can be only 2 reasons to this. Either Bachchan family is the most important family of

India which i would not believe. Or Bachchan family does something which attracts media to write about them. 
This led me to do some research of Sr. Bachchans public interactions. I was taken by surprise to know that he write long blog every night before going to sleep. This he has been doing from past 1306 days. Can you imagine? Every day he has an opinion about something. Plus he tweets at least 10 times a day. No wonder he is in news every day.

My question is that is fame so important that you actually write a blog every day? And after that you slam on media to report so much on you’re soon to arrive grandchild. As a celebrity people sometime forget that marketing of celebrity brand is different from marketing of products. Here being in news everyday is not good. You need to be quite some time. We agree that you might be very excited about your grandchild but please if you want your privacy, be a bit media shy and reduce interacting about your personal life on public forums. I sincerely wish that your grandchild may not bring the havoc which your son’s wedding did in media.

Rockstar!!!

Frankly speaking I dont think that i have enough power to write a single word about this masterpiece. If I was the director of this film, I would have never believed that I made such a beautiful film. If I was to write the review of this film, I would have resigned as the film cant be reviewed. If I was the projector guy of this film, I would have watched every scene of this film standing all day for all weeks with a tear in my eye. For me Rockstar defines love. The film is eternal. I can truly understand if anyone disagree with me. This post is not my usual post on marketing of film. The movie is about Love and this post is more relevant to people who believe in love. When i started this blog i decided that Ill never post my personal feelings in this blog. But I was so impressed by the movie that i had to post something about it here...
Its like you are reading a poem. A poem of love. In short the movie is about the Rumi's poem "Yaha se bahut door, Galat aur sahi ke paar, ek maidaan hai. Main waha milunga tujhe!!!"

RA.One

I know I’ve talked a lot about the movie and now the movie has released, I should let numbers do the talking. But sometime it’s not just about numbers and I’m not saying this because the movie has done well. I have been constantly stating that this movie will open big, but at what cost? There is a concept of film marketing, which state that marketing is majorly done to get a good opening. Also according to one independent research, on an average 40% of film collections are on first 3 days of release. Now if we have 53 cr. as first 3 days collections of RA.One, and we already know that around 50 cr. were spend on the marketing of film. Plus if you calculate Shah Rukh Khan’s time to it, it will emerge as not a profitable proposition.

Everybody says that Shah Rukh Khan is a good marketer. I’ll strongly disagree to that because a good marketer knows how much marketing is to be done for a product. In entertainment industry creating lot od noise may also sometime go negative. Ram Gopal Verma Ki Aag is a classic example of that. Ram Gopal Verma went gaga over his film and went out of his way in promotion of film. As he did fantastic promotion, now nobody will ever be able to forget that movie. His over marketing created a long term dent on his image. RA.One was a decent film which required decent marketing. I agree that he had made a very costly film but the content and appeal of film was not very entertaining and hence people came out disappointed as they were expecting a lot.

I would also like to quote Aamir Khan in this context. Not many people know that Aamir is working on a project which is produced by Excell Entertainment. Not Aamir is on roll as his past films Ghajini and 3 idiots have been blockbusters. Aamir could have gone gaga about his upcoming film as there is less than 5 months in its release. But Aamir intelligently is keeping hopes of the audience low as it is not a massy film. Same he did in Dhobi Ghaat. He knew that the film will not work in small screens so he promoted it as Kiran Rao’s film and not Aamir Khan’s film.

Bodyguard!!!

It was Wednesday evening when I got the early estimates from my office about the first day collections of Bodyguard. According to a source, the movie was looking like 18+ in its first day. I didn't belived it. Firstly because 'It was from a SOURCE' and secondly because I had never trusted to the sources of someone who has worked on the film, they always inflate the actual numbers. So I was expecting a figure around 15 or 16. But that was not bad at all. Last year Dabangg made the record opening of 14.5 on Friday and Bodyguard was all set to brake that record. I was completely satisfied that movie will be the biggest opener for the rest of the year (considering RA.1 will not get that big response).
In the evening i had a meeting at Juhu and after that i decided to visit Chandan Cinema at Juhu which is a single screen theater next to PVR Juhu. I was amazed to know see huge crowd outside theater disappointed as the tickets for the whole day were sold out. Also after a long long time i spotted a guy selling tickets in Black. This amused me so much that i wanted to check the situation at PVR too. And to my surprise the tickets were all sold out at a multiplex too. Amazing!!!
Later in the evening i got the report from boxofficeindia.com stating that Bodyguard has grossed over 20 Cr. in a single day. This was huge considering that this was the biggest day at Box Office ever. The movie released on more then 2700 screens with more then 2000 prints and still all the shows everywhere were houseful. At Noida all the shows were sold out in advance in all the multiplexes. In Indore itself the movie had 147 shows which increased over the day as the demand was very high.
Over few days the movie still has managed to do great business and is sustaining at most of the markets.
Now lets have a look how did this happened. Most of you will say that this all was Salman effect. So my question to you will be that where was this effect when Ready released. I agree that Ready was also a big hit, but it was not bigger then even Dabangg whereas, Bodyguard has surpassed the first day collections of Dabangg by huge difference. This in not just Salman effect. the marketing worked for the film starting from the first day. This was a action romance film and perfect for Salman's fans. But in real Shera- Salman's real life bodyguard did the trick. He was made the face of movie and he addressed media several times. Media also showed keen interest in Shera who doesn't get much gossip from Salman otherwise. Shera spoke confidently about Bhai and his life beyond movie and meanwhile gave a push to marketing of Bodyguard. Second most exploited tool was pair of Salman-Kareena. Both Kareena and Salman have been part of many blockbuster movies in recent times. The movie was positioned in a manner that they come to give you biggest blockbuster ever. This did the trick. The movie became the biggest release ever even before its release. And that's how everyone got excited to watch the movie first day which they knew was the biggest movie of the year. 

Bbhudda clash with Delhi Belly

So here i’m back and really angry with one time legend and highly regarded actor Mr. Amitabh Bachchan. This in regards to recent activities and comments he has made on his movie and Delhi Belly. Now this is a known fact that Delhi Belly which was a experimental film by Aamir Khan has been widely accepted and has managed to collect over 26  crore in first 3 days whereas Bbhuddha... which was ambitious comeback film from Mr. Bachchan has just done reasonable opening of Rs. 8 crore. (*According to data available on www.boxofficeindia.com and www.bollywoodhungama.com). The problem is that Big B is not ready to accept this reality and has started commenting on the business of Delhi Belly and also stated that the collections are wrongly reported from the influence of Aamir Khan Production. As his comment in one of his post was “DB is good in select multiplexes and overseas pockets only. At 25-30% it has had a weak start in metros like Calcutta (10% in some cases), Jaipur, Pune, Surat and emerging Hindi metros like Kanpur and even Bombay is nowhere near as expected with Saturday collections clocking barely 25-30% bookings at multiplexes like Fame Adlabs still. Tickets are readily available most everywhere.” which is not true. I was struggling for only one ticket of the 8:40 show on Saturday and had to watch 10:05 show in PVR Oberoi mall. This shows that not even single seat was empty anywhere.

Sure Amitabh was not prepared for this. He has thought of Delhi Belly as a very niche movie and always had this thing in his mind that Bbhudda will do better business then DB. And he has reason to think this ways. BHTB was a proper masala bollywood film whereas DB was some experimental English movie. And box office has shown good numbers for all bollwood masala movies recently. BHTB was inspired by Dharmendra Yamla Pagla Deewana which did great business even though Dharamji and his boys are not as big star as BIG B.

Let’s talk about Aamirs DB. One should be very careful to release his movie alongside Aamir’s movie even if it is some experiment from AKP. We should not forget that Aamir is best known for experimenting and making them a success. I still remember a story told to me by insider that everyone on the marketing team was shocked when prior to release of Taare Zameen Pe Aamir announced that “this should not be treated as a small film and I expect this to be the biggest hit of the year.” It was appearent that even without any bollywood masala or a female lead the film was the biggest hit of the year. So this proves that  one should not underestimate Aamir’s movie at any cost.

Movie – A Commercial Art

Entertainment is a business more of what your customer will like then what you like. Movie is a part of entertainment industry is also a part of Art industry. Art at various points is considered to have the prospective of maker and see it as from creator’s prospective. This makes Film a very tricky business. Films are kind of combination of Art and Entertainment. Movie is popularly known as Commercial Art. Which means that there is lots of creativity involved but its objective is to generate revenues. The reason why it is a form of commercial art is that it is made with huge budgets and one cannot risk such big amount for the sake of creativity. In other form of art, like Painting and Music, the cost of production is not that high and hence they can be made just for the sake of creativity.

So does that means that films have less scope for creativity? The answer is No. This makes it more challenging for the director to do wonders with movie and make it a huge hit. Films like 3 idiots and low budget Shaitaan has proved in Indian market that creativity only get enhanced if the challenge of making it commercially successful is taken as opportunity. As one has rightly quoted that every obstacle if seen differently is an opportunity.

In India we have one more industry, advertising which is a form of commercial art. The objective if advertising is not to please eyes but is to make you buy that product. Advertising as an industry is huge in India and Indian advertisements are cortically acclaimed everywhere in world. We can take this as example that every year we win something at Cannes, which are considered as Oscars of Advertising industry. Indian advertisers and very well understood that the first objective of advertising is to sell. But sadly Indian film industry still need understand this fact. Still there are directors like Sanjay Leela Bhansali who consider themselves as artist and spen over 20 crores of producers money on a movie like Sawariya. One should understand that masses want to see something which they can relate with and not something director can relate with. A blue canvas and fictitious background is something which a commoner will not relate to and hence will not go and watch that movie ever.

A Negative Star

The concept of negative star or a Black Hole is very recent and very common in the bollywood families where are in bollywood from generations. Before going into who all are negative star, let me explain the concept of a negative star. A negative star is a celebrity who is very popular but is not able to generate revenues, infact sometimes whose presence impacts the collections negatively. Now I think the question may appear that then why this is a recent phenomena and why it is more prevalent in the bollywood families which are in business since generations. The reason is that media makes anyone who is son/daughter/wife/brother/sister of any successful celebrity a talk of the town. By this their media generate revenues as media is funded by advertisers and actual consumer need not to pay anything to view that star, but when it comes to actually paying out of your pocket to go and watch that star, audience completely rejects him/her.

A very good example of a negative star is Uday Chopra. Now Uday has been more or less ok in the category of side hero in Dhoom. He started his carrier with Mere Yaar Ki Shaadi Hai which did average business for any newcomer. But when he appeared recently in Pyaar Impossible, the film was a flop. This will explain this concept clearly. When Uday was not a star, he was not contributing nor reducing anything from movie. But after a while when he became the negative star, he started affecting the box office collections negatively. It was like even if it is a good movie, I won’t go and watch Uday Chopra movie and I’ll prefer a newcomer’s movie.

The list of stars who have started being a negative stars is Abhishek Bachchan, Amitabh Bachchan, Akkshay Kumar, Ram Gopal Verma, Sanjay Leela Bhansali etc.

Fun Facts

It seems that my blog has been very much critical and serious on various issues. So I just thought of a blog which has some fun facts from tinsel town.

Kaizad Gustad: Not many might even know who Kaizad is. For me he’s really very intelligent guy who led his life bohemian style at the age of 18 although being from a wealthy family. He worked as Pizza delivery boy, bar tender and even stripper to fund his needs. He kept a diary and later published it as a book ‘Of No Fixed Address’. Later he collected money from friends, family and credit card companies to make his full-length movie ‘Bombay Boys’

Kunal Roy Kapoor: Not many know that Kunal Roy Kapoor is brother to Siddharth Roy Kapoor (CEO UTV Pictures) and Aditya Roy Kapoor (VJ of Channel V who also acted in Action Replayy and Guzarish). Also Kunal Roy Kapoor has directed a movie called ‘President is Coming’ with Konkona Sen.

Imaad and Vivaan Shah: Many of you might know that the guy who acted in Dil Dosti Etc. was Imaad Shah, son of legendary Nasir-ud-din Shah. But it might surprise you that Imaad has a younger brother Vivaan Shah who played the role of Arun Kumar in Saat Khoon Maaf. Arun Kapoor was the same kid who was raised by Susanna in the movie.

Vidhu Vinod Chopra: Chopra hails from a prominent Indian film-making family – namely the Chopra's, being cousins of B. R. Chopra and Yash Chopra. Also, by relation, he is the maternal uncle of Indian producer-director Karan Johar.

Farhan Akhtar: Farhan Akhtar is the only Celebrity in Bollywood who has Acted, Directed, Scripted, Sung and Produced films. He can be clearly classified as the complete entertainer.

Delhi Belly- new way promotion with Music Videos

Hey Guys, This time i'm going to talk about only Delhi Belly which looking like the hottest movie of the season. The movie is a product of Aamir Khan Productions and this in itself gives it a label of quality checked. If we look back, AKP (Aamir Khan Productions) have produced some really great movies like Lagaan, Taare Zameen Pe, Jane Tu..., Peepli [Live], and Dhoobi Ghaat. Although all the movies have not been big revenue generators but few films like Dhoobi Ghaat were not meant to generate big revenues.

This season Aamir Khan is back with not so his type of movie. Recently i saw one promo where he claimed that his reputation which is build by 20 years of hard work will be ruined by this movie. The movie look awesome and i think this one will change Imran's fate in bollywood. Imran has always been compared to Ranbir Kapoor but has never reached the level of success and brand value that Ranbir has been able to generate. 

Coming back to the promotion of movie, this movie has 5 promotional videos and that i think is for the first time in the history of bollywood. We have already seen 4 of them but we also know that Aamir has been hyping the one more item song. He also asked for opinion of his FB fans on this. The three options which he considered for the video were Deepika, Katrina and Malaika. Now we are getting some buzz on that he has finalized the girl for his item number and soon will announce her name. I think if there is an item number in Aamir's movie, it definitely has to be very different and yet too appealing for the audience. 

Ram Sampat in an interview said that initially when he was signed for the film, he was supposed to do only one song for the movie, and the way it has turned out is that this movie has highest number of promotional music videos. I think that's what is special about Aamir. One cant expect anything but surprises from this production house. Lets see how much surprise or shock his crime comedy movie is able to generate.

Films Budget v/s Films Revenue

Hi Guys, This is in extension to the post which I wrote yesterday. The reason I’m writing on this topic is to discuss the relevance of revenues to the cost of the film. We have seen various equations in bollywood. We have seen small budget movie like Bheja Fry which was made under strict budget of 50 Lakhs and 2 cr. was the marketing cost generating overall ticket sale revenues of more than 20 cr. We have also seen movies like Game which was shot in 5 different countries and overall cost of production and marketing was Rs. 65 cr. doing a business of just 5 cr. in its lifetime on ticket window. So a question arrived in my mind should there a defined budget for a movie and no movie should be expensive than that?

Lately we have witnessed many production houses which are into making small budget movies with some path braking content. The flagship brand in this segment is Balaji and ALT production of Ekta Kapoor. Her approach is to spend very less on production and spend 4 times of production cost on marketing. With her ALT banner she has produced LSD and Ragini MMS. Both the films were made under the strict budget of 1 cr. and around 4 cr. were spend on marketing of the film. And as we know that both the films have generated more than 30 cr. ticket revenues for Ekta Kapoor. Another production house which is promoting such movies is UTV Spotboy. The movies produced by this production house are Dev.D, Udaan etc. They don’t spend as much as Balaji in marketing but they also have been quite successful till date in their approach.

Another group consist of production houses which spend a lot both on production and marketing. Excell Entertainment can be tagged as the master of this approach. Till date Excell Entertainment has produced movies like DCH, Lakshya, Rock On, DON, Game and Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara. Lately the cost of producing the films by Excell Entertainment has increased tremendously. The way they produced Game can be seen as the disaster in bollywood. As already mentioned the cost of the movie was 65 cr. and they were able to recover on 5cr. from ticket sale. After Game, Excell is getting one step ahead with ZNMD by producing it in whopping 75 cr. Another production house which is spending money like water is Red Chillies. I wonder when both the production houses come together for DON 2, how much money will be spend on production and marketing and the real question is that will it worth it?

Changing Trend 2011

My first post of my blog is dedicated to the year 2011. To all who belong to media and entertainment industry, this is the biggest year on this decade. First it was world cup, and then it was IPL and now the big storm of Bollywood. If you are wondering what’s as special about this year as we do get IPL every year and World Cup every 4 years, the difference was that we won the World Cup and TV industry witnessed their highest TRP’s ever of 40+ in India Pakistan match.

Coming back to Bollywood, it hasn’t witnessed much of success in year 2011.With the first half of year flooded with some of the big flops from Akshay Kumar, Abhishek Bachchan and other superstars it might seems that this is another dull year for Bollywood. But this is not the actual scenario. The actual reason is a wave of change in the desirability of audience. If one observe closely, he would find that multiplex have seen full houses in the movies like Kung Fu Panda, Pirates of Carrabian Rio etc. even in its second week. And this is not just the trend in Metros. The Hollywood movies have been successful in B towns like Indore, Jaipur etc.

Also audience have loved various small budget movies and have gone in theatres to watch movie again and again. The movies like No One Killed Jessica and Tanu Weds Manu were big success on ticket window.

Now this was about first half year of Bollywood. Now let’s see, what we can expect from Bollywood in coming 6 months of 2011. After the world cup and IPL one can expect Bollywood to get big and it certainly will get bigger post 1^st july. The first movie which will release on 1^st july is Delhi Belly. This is an Aamir Khan Production and as per hype, it has attracted huge traction. There is a reason why I would like to call this year as year of KHANdan. This year we’ll see actual clash of 3 Khans. This year there’ll be 2 releases of Salman Khan, 2 releases of Shah Rukh Khan and maintaining his pace, we’ll see one release of Aamir Khan. Now if we observe, Salmaan Khan is really big revenue generator at box office. He has come really very close to Aamir’s 3 idiot numbers twice with his Dabangg and Ready. Aamir’s success is well known. His movie is 3 idiots is highest grosser at box office till date. As per Shah Rukh, he’s desperately looking for a comeback with his the most expensive movie RA.One. Shah Rukh has invested almost 150 cr. In the making of film and he’s expected to invest another 40 cr. In the marketing of film. To just recover the cost of this big budget movie he requires 40+ opening which is achieved by only three movies in Indian cinema, 3 idiots, Ready and Dabangg. It seems like RA.One will be the biggest gamble by Shah Rukh till date.

Regards

Gurvinder Singh

The Blog of Bollywood with a goofy eye

Hey guys. This will be my first post to the blog which is totally related to the Bollywood film fraternity. With this blog I’ll try to track the trend of Bollywood and analyse various happenings. Your comments are welcomed and are extremely important for betterment of my blog.

Regards

Gurvinder Singh