New Hindi films ride on marketing hype

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: Sikander Kher were quite a washout. According to a trade analyst, this year the stakes for newcomers are really high as a sum of nearly Rs 500 crore is banked on newcomers in Bollywood. The reason that most production houses are willing to give newcomers a chance to display their skills on screen is because the success of a movie is no longer dependent only on box-office collections. There are various avenues of diminishing the risks for a film by selling the rights for television, home video as well as overseas distribution.

For director Tanuja Chandra, newcomers bring a certain level of freshness to the film and have no larger-than-life aura around them.

“That is where the audience finds a connection with the actor which makes the film more real,” she adds. Chandra also feels that the availability of a debutant actor is much easier than that of an established film star. “There are fewer hassles about the availability of dates and the actors are more dedicated since it is like a make or break situation for them,” she explains. Most newcomers are also signed for lead roles as they demand much lesser remuneration than their more established and popular counterparts.

Says Rahul Merchant, assistant vice-president, business development, P9 Integrated: “Although it is easier on the pocket to cast newcomers for a film, the challenge to market films starring a newcomer is much more than marketing a film with an established actor.” There are both commercial and financial risks that any filmmaker has to bear in mind before casting a new actor. “Branding for a film has to be done in the right manner, failing which the film will find it difficult to sustain shows at a multiplex, find distributors and also have problems selling the satellite rights,” he says.

Recently, the box office witnessed intense competition when two films—Love Story 2050 and Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na—were slated for release on the same day as a result of which both the films had been promoted aggressively.

The Harman Baweja-starrer Love Story 2050 was made on a budget of about Rs 50 crore. The producers set aside Rs 5 crore for marketing but most of the film’s costs were recovered even before the release through various co-branding associations, merchandising, satellite rights, music and overseas rights that were sold before the movie released.