Item Quotient

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: For last year’s Diwali blockbuster, the retro flick Om Shanti Om, starring Shah Rukh Khan and newcomer Deepika Padukone, director Farah Khan gathered 31 stars from Bollywood including Jeetendra, Dharmendra, Rekha, Sanjay Dutt, Saif Ali Khan, Shilpa Shetty, Kajol, Karisma, Salman Khan and Govinda for the “mother of all item numbers”. Coincidence or not, when the film was released by distributor Eros International across 1,400 plus screens globally, the first week collections were staggering. It amassed $13.5 million in India, $1.5 million in the UK and over $2 million in North America in its first week itself, making it one of the best openings in Bollywood ever.

“Item numbers have become a part and parcel of many Bollywood commercial Hindi films,” admits Dhilin Mehta, MD, Shree Ashtavinayak Cine Vision.

According to Bollywood insiders, A-grade stars either do item numbers and guest appearances as favours for free or obviously charge a bomb for it. Recently, we saw both SRK and Hrithik Roshan gyrate to the same song for Krazzy4, a Rakesh Roshan production that bombed at the box office.

Yes, sometimes, the film doesn’t fire at the box office, but audiences remember the song and dance routine for long. With the industry now releasing scores of prints overseas, it’s imperative for a film to do well in the opening week—“that’s when the largest collections typically come,” says an insider.

Think Aishwarya Rai in Kajra Re (Bunty Aur Babli) or Bipasha Basu in Beedi Jalaile (Omkara) and Billo Rani (Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal) and Phoonk De (No Smoking) or even Kareena in Yeh Mera Dil (Don). Though Vishal Bhardwaj’s Othello adaptation Omkara was critically acclaimed, it didn’t do particularly well at the BO. But Bhardwaj himself was astounded at the reaction to the song. That year (2006) no party was complete without Beedi Jalaile.

Then, there are the item girls—Malaika Arora (Chaiya Chaiya) or Yana Gupta (Babuji Zara...) or Isha Koppikar (Khallas).

So, how do “item” economics work? With stars charging the moon nowadays—as Subhash Ghai puts it, “commerce has gone to actors’ hands”—how does a film justify spending lakhs, maybe a crore even, on a single song and dance?