It?s been a mixed year for the Indian film industry. Big-budget films which were hyped and expected to do well didn?t. Instead smaller films clicked with the audience which was willing more than ever to experiment and watch different things. There was a spurt in new directors, new actors, new ideas. Box-office collections show that at least five Bollywood films crossed the Rs 50-crore mark, and we still haven?t calculated the returns from Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi and Ghajini.
Speaking of varying content, world cinema has been playing everywhere, from multiplexes to home video. And yet a financial meltdown is on us, and a fast corporatising Bollywood is already feeling the pinch. There?s a rethink on coming projects. Some amount of correction has started in talent fee ? actors? fees had risen to unsustainable levels, according to analysts. But if 2008 has been a mixed-to-normal year, 2009 will be challenging. For, there is less money to spend and huge levels of uncertainty. And yet, in 2008, we actually saw a brand new Bollywood, ?a version 2.0? as PNC?s Pritish Nandy puts it. Will Bollywood be able to sustain its new burst of creativity?
Brand New Bollywood
So far, the Bollywood year belongs to Abbas Tyrewallah, Dibakar Banerjee, Abhishek Kapoor, Rajkumar Gupta, Nishikant Kamat, Neeraj Pandey ? relatively new names, bursting with new ideas. Take Dibakar Banerjee?s Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye, which can?t be more different than his first release Khosla Ka Ghosla but what a marvel it is. UTV launched Oye Lucky Lucky Oye, about a superthief, who wants the world to know about his art but can?t because it also means he will get caught, on the Friday Mumbai was still in shocks after the terror attacks.
It obviously didn?t get the release it was seeking, but the movie has picked up tremendously, thanks to word-of-mouth publicity. Inspired by a real-life incident in Delhi, Banerjee did rigorous research to make it as real as possible. ?The best thing that?s happened to this industry is that people as un-Bollywood like me are getting to do films the way they want to,? says Banerjee.
BIG Pictures COO Mahesh Ramanathan says as a genre, crazy comedies were reinstated in 2008. ?People loved to watch mad comedies on the big screen. This genre is here to stay. In 2009, comedies apart, feel-good films will do well,? he adds. BIG is producing quite a few of them, including Vinay Shukla?s Mirch. ?2008 saw Bollywood opening up to lots of new talent. New actors, new directors, new writers, new technicians created the magic of new cinema. Mainstream, offbeat, arthouse: there was cinema of all kind entering the theatres. Even world cinemas made its debut,? says Nandy.
Death of the Formula
In 2008, the changing preferences of the audience came through like never before. Films with substantial content did well, over-hyped projects failed to sizzle at the box-office (think Tashan, Bhootnath, Yuvraaj). Agrees Navin Shah, CEO, Percept Picture Company, which distributed the Pakistani film Khuda Kay Liye in India: ?There is a lot of demand for non-formulaic content. With the audience demanding it, producers are showing a huge appetite to experiment with content.?
Tyrewala, who took up the ?challenge to make the most commercial Hindi film ever with love, loss and the patch-up at the airport?, saw his film Jaane Tu? Ya Jaane Na work wonders at the box-office because he told the story so well. Tyrewallah has written such wonderful screenplays and dialogues from Maqbool to Munnabhai MBBS and Jaane Tu? was his first directorial venture. Says Rajkumar Gupta whose Aamir, a story about an ordinary man caught in extraordinary circumstances, did well at the theatres: ?What you need is the content, a script, a story the audience can connect to, not big budgets,? says Gupta. He points out that a film like Aamir gives hope to new directors waiting in the wings.? Scriptwriter Jaideep Sahni points out that the audience has consistently been supporting films which give them something new, irrespective of the genre or aesthetic schools.
?There was a special focus this year to produce films that have great scripts irrespective of size,? says Siddharth Roy Kapur of UTV Motion Pictures.
World Cinema
In keeping with changing audience demands, world cinema made its debut with a bang ? with two TV channels and three big players bringing the best of the world?s best to India. Through the year, one saw a host of movies in the theatres and on TV that earlier would usually do the festival circuit and disappear into home video. From Fatih Akin?s acclaimed The Edge of Heaven, Nuri Bilge Ceylan?s Three Monkeys, Zhang Yimou?s Hero to an Ingrid Bergman retrospective at the multiplex, film buffs couldn?t have asked for more. Says Gautam Sikhnis of Palador Pictures: ?The response to Bergman was unexpected. We had not expected such an outpouring all over the country.?
Lifting tunes ? and a story or two
Ram Sampat, who composed a catchy jingle for Sony Ericsson, took the mighty Roshans to court when he found that that tune had worked its way into two songs for Krazzy 4. At a time when Bollywood is waking up to intellectual property rights, Sampat always knew he had a case and the Roshans had to pay up. Then, Warner Brothers may have sued the producers of Hari Puttar for sounding too much like Harry Potter but the story seemed straight out of Home Alone. Even Dil Kabaddi starring the likes of Irrfan Khan, Rahul Bose and Soha Ali Khan is a scene-by-scene copy of Woody Allen?s Husbands and Wives. Says an analyst: ?As Bollywood corporatises itself and also becomes a global player, the industry will have to take issues like IPR seriously.?
New Marketing Mantra
One of the biggest trends of 2008 was the way Bollywood marketed its films. ?Now, producers are marketing the film to the target audience. A lot of micro-marketing is happening,? says Shah of Percept.
Producers are also waking up to the potential of new media to promote films. ?To achieve what we have achieved this year one has had to focus on making great films, not just great ?projects?,? says Kapur of UTV. But a lot of the success has depended on the marketing too. ?The first challenge is to control the budget, and then, it is an equally onerous task to market and distribute these films. One must show confidence in the content. The way we marketed Benegal?s Welcome to Sajjanpur surprised a lot of people because we were as aggressive as we were for Jodhaa Akbar or Race,? he adds.
The industry was hoping films like Oye Lucky, Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi and Ghajini would bring the smiles back. Oye Lucky?s release was low key, coming as it did after the Mumbai terror attacks, and Rab Ne? has had mixed reviews. In the time of a global slowdown, the consumer sentiment is negative and this is bound to impact the entertainment industry in 2009 as well. As Nandy puts it: ?Let?s see how it all pans out in 2009 to see what survives and what does not.?
