Which Was the Year’s Biggest Hit? Nobody Knows

Making sense of the arithmetic behind blockbuster movies after the mid-2000s

Exactly at what point did regular film-goers like you and I begin to express love, hate or indifference towards films like a scoreboard?

‘Got out of theatre. Film will take 2-cr opening, 3.5-cr weekend, 6-7-cr lifetime. #Fail’ said one tweet. Fail, why? You didn’t like? I didn’t tweet back. Clearly, they were talking about a low-budget film. If it had been a big-budget ‘event’ picture—Krrish/Dhoom 3—they would have been shouting from rooftops how the film would shatter all box-office records, months before its release.

With films, as with humans, money is an easy barometer of success when there is no measure for quality. India has no equivalent of the Oscars, where an award can instantly boost a film’s commercial prospects globally. Practically every Bollywood film finds ‘critical acclaim’—three, four or five stars from some reviewer, analyst, radio jockey, numerologist, astrologer or the other, which get plastered on the film’s billboards. I’m only surprised no one has started rating films beyond five stars yet.

Box-office figures indicate the number of people who actually went to watch a film. If that’s huge, the general assumption is it must be a film worth going for. Or at least worth watching on a TV channel that shells out crores for ‘satellite’ rights. Maybe things have always been this way. And if I hadn’t spent half my waking hours on social media since the mid 2000s, I might have never known how obsessed we all are with a movie’s box-office numbers.

Using gold price as an index for the value of the rupee, India’s highest-earning film is Mughal-e-Azam. I’m not sure how many people in 1960 knew exactly how much it had made. Yet, everybody knows the opening score of Bodyguard (Rs 22 crore) and that Agneepath, with Rs 23 crore, beat it.

The mid-2000s is also when top stars began to co-produce films they would star in. Box-office numbers became media tools to ego cast themselves to ‘the masses’. Imagine Shah Rukh Khan as a politician and the collections of RA.One as the number of votes he’s secured. It has nothing to do with the film, but it directly impacts endorsements and other deals he is likely to land or sustain.

My knowledge of Bollywood business rivals Narendra Modi’s grasp of Indian history. Whatever little I’ve picked up is from guzzling Kingfishers in Versova with those in the dhanda—or, in one case, swigging vodkas with Ram Gopal Varma. Very roughly, this is how it works:

Typically, a producer, on the back of a male marquee name greenlighting a project (also known as a script), pools in resources to make, say, a Rs 10-crore film. He sells it to a studio (or another producer) at Rs 20 crore. They spend a further 25 per cent or so on developing film prints and publicising the film. Half the money spent on advertising, as they say, goes waste, but who knows which half?

The movie is now worth Rs 25 crore. It is sold to distributors on varying terms depending on the ‘buzz’ around the film or how ‘garam’ it is before its release. Distributors across India are organised by region, often named after pre-Independence principalities: Nizam, Mysore, Central Province Central India, Bombay Presidency, East Punjab, and so on. The distributors together spend, presumably, Rs 50 crore to pick up the film. They pass it down to single-screen cinemas and multiplexes. Whatever deals are struck with the distributors, let’s say it works out to all theatres collectively spending Rs 70 crore to play the film. Now, for the movie to make money for everyone in the chain, it has to rake in no less than Rs 70 crore, so that, effectively, becomes the ‘budget’ of a Rs 10 crore picture.

This isn’t radically different from any product that sells with a mark-up on its cost price on the street. Here’s the catch, though: Most single-screen cinemas are known to under-invoice the number of tickets sold. Old-time producers were prone to show lower earnings to dupe the taxman. Even till the early 2000s, 90 per cent of films were supposed to have flopped, which would be odd, because who the hell wants to invest in an industry with only a 10 per cent chance of making money?

So, what’s the other thing that changed in the mid-2000s? Corporates entered the picture. Most of Bollywood is now run by half a dozen companies, most of which are also publicly-listed. Actor-producer Aamir Khan suggests the gains in stock prices from declaring a film a hit far outweigh the losses they may incur while making it: “[My corporate studio] may have effectively lost Rs 20 crore [on a film]. But if my share prices go up, I may earn Rs 200 crore. What is Rs 20 crore, so long as I can keep that perception?”

I see the point. Surely Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Ram-Leela was a blockbuster. It’s still easy to sense how this announcement would have hugely (even if notionally) benefitted the stock of producers Eros, which debuted at the New York Stock Exchange only two days before the film’s release.

The studio/producer posts the film’s box-office revenues. Independent reporters are supposed to verify the claim. These are bona fide trade analysts by self-appointment. Between them, something as factual as a number can turn into weekly debates. There is no consensus yet on whether Krrish 3 beat Chennai Express, or if Dhoom 3 really walloped both to become the biggest hit of the year. Distressed by the ‘fudging of numbers’ late last year, Bombay Times, The Times of India’s advertorial space for entertainment ‘news’, decided to drop its box-office column altogether. It is in their best interest to piss off no one in particular.

Back in the day, the Bollywood producer in a white safari suit with shady friends could release, at best, a film a year. Today’s studios can roll out a movie every few weeks. Except that a big blockbuster can only be designed around all of five or six superstars. So there is competitive bidding between studios for that actor whose Rs 10-crore film made Rs 70 crore (merely breaking even), and he rightly doubles his fee, which is half the film’s budget anyway. And the new movie, which looks so much like the old one, now has to make that much more.

This is how this piece of turd called the 100- or 200-crore movie was created. Nearly all the members of this club are either remakes or sequels. There are enough screens to ensure whoever wants to watch such a film does so on the weekend it opens. ‘Blackiyas’ needn’t scalp tickets anymore. It’s the only major release playing on every multiplex screen. Its star and songs and promos have invaded your senses already. A film this ‘front-loaded’ could hurt your backside. Web trolls add salt to your wound if you hated the film, as if it’s your fault it did so well (‘Read ur review of Chennai Express, did 228 crore! Phat gayi? Lol’).

I’m sure Salman bhai’s fans are gearing up for Jai Ho’s release. I totally get the excitement for a movie. I’m just not sure how its crossing Rs 300 crore adds to the pleasure, bhaitard. You’ll be the one spending that money—and it’s not coming back to you.

About The Author

Mayank Shekhar

Mayank Shekhar runs the pop-culture website TheW14.com