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