Local flavours, global expertise

Ashish Patil

ON my first day at Yash Raj Films, Yash Chopra told me, “Bete… kissi ko nahi pataa picture kyun chalti ya nahi chalti. Just make a film that you are proud of and not embarrassed by. Baaki, all the best!” Coming from Yashji, I thought that was just brilliant advice. Simple, honest and true! He mirrored the words of Academy Award winning screenwriter William Goldman, who said “Nobody knows anything!” So when I was asked to write about likely trends in the film industry for 2013, I thought let me add a big disclaimer upfront.

A good place to start when trying to project the future is to study the past. This year’s been great for Bollywood, business and otherwise. Films of a variety of genres and scales have done well. A host of new actors and technicians were launched. And never before had the Indian movie-goer got so much choice or been so open to sampling new content. A large number of films were released with a much better success ratio than before. Of course, we had our share of turkeys which have their own set of learnings, but let’s focus on what worked.

More than 12 films joined the R100 crore club. More than eight crossed the R50-crore mark. More than five did more than R25-crore at the domestic box office alone. More than

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