Summer 2010 can be summed up in two words for Bollywood watchers – hype and disappointment. With just a few hits, a couple of average earners, and a long list of flops, the industry’s scorecard has been nothing but dismal. Of the 125 films released in the first half of the year, only Prakash Jha’s Rajneeti — a political saga that borrows heavily from the mythological epic Mahabharata and Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather, and includes references to the Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty — was a blockbuster. Two of the summer’s most eagerly awaited (and over hyped) releases — the Hrithik Roshan starrer Kites and critically acclaimed filmmaker Mani Ratnam’s Raavan — were commercial disasters. Though Kites earned the distinction of being the first Bollywood film to break into the U.S. box-office Top Ten and American film critics seemed quite impressed with heartthrob Roshan, the film failed to recover its astronomical costs. Raavan, which boasted of an A-list star cast — Bollywood stars Aishwarya Rai, Abhishek Bachchan, and Tamil superstar Vikram — and music by A. R. Rahman, was panned by both critics and audiences. The combined losses of these two big-budget flops was pegged at Rs. 100 crore (around $ 20,000,000), hiking the Hindi film industry’s total losses in the first two quarters to a staggering Rs. 500 crore.
The worst-hit in this debacle run have been the corporate houses, ironically the same folks who are being blamed for Bollywood’s annus horribilis. Corporatization has been a rather recent phenomenon for the Hindi film industry. It was only in 2005-2006 that corporate giants like Reliance, and companies like UTV and Eros, who were involved in television software and international film distribution, ventured into film production. But the corporate houses did not really ‘produce’ films. Having raised enormous sums from the market, they could hardly afford to spend months developing a project. Instead, they started ‘acquiring’ films from independent producers or production companies. What resulted was an endless cycle of inflated costs — the producers, seeing the demand for their ‘ready’ films, hiked up their prices, and the stars also followed suit. With the corporate houses more than willing to pay the exorbitant star fees and acquisition costs, film budgets skyrocketed almost 100 per cent. Recovering costs became an increasingly difficult, and at times, impossible proposition. What further aggravated the situation was the corporate houses’ involvement in distribution and exhibition, which maximized not only the profit but also the risk margins.
What had seemed a viable business model in 2005-2007 soon turned out to be a recipe for disaster. By 2009, most of the corporate houses had realized that it was safer and smarter to go the co-production and production route. Rajneeti, 2010’s summer blockbuster was a co-production between UTV and filmmaker Prakash Jha; the medium budget rom com, I Hate Luv Storys was co-produced by Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions and UTV; and the critically acclaimed surprise hit Udaan was again a UTV and Anurag Kashyap co-production. Productions and co-productions, in spite of being more time-consuming, are definitely more viable and cheaper than acquisitions — a reality that corporate houses like Anil Ambani’s BIG Pictures have learned the hard way. After the debacle of Kites and Raavan, the company has made no new acquisitions, instead focusing on its productions and co-productions.
The only winner is this rather dismal scenario seems to be the small-budget film — Udaan and Tere Bin Laden — which has managed to woo the urbane, multiplex audience with its intelligent script and smart marketing. As film critic Nikhat Kazmi remarks, the new rules of the game are, “Don’t exceed your budget beyond Rs 10-15 crores, don’t dish out inflated star salaries, don’t invest in senseless exotic outdoor, overseas, extra-effected song-dance sequences, hire a smart story-writer, ensure your film has something to say, and most importantly, say it differently.”
Can You Handle the Truth? Headlines Today, July 16 2009
Within literally a day of its debut, Sach ka Saamna (Facing the Truth), the Indian version of the reality show Moment of Truth, was already in the news. The show’s first participant Smita Mathai, an epitome of middle-class respectability, had failed the “sach ki agnipariksha” (“the ultimate test of truth”) when she denied that she entertained thoughts of extra-marital liaisons. According to the polygraph test, she was lying. As Mathai, with an incredulous look, vehemently protested, “Rubbish!” and insisted, “No, this is not true,” her husband seemed to be in shock – his “nice Indian wife,” who had put up with his alcoholism, had not only admitted on national television that she had wanted to kill him, but also that she would sleep with another man if he never found out. [Though the show is mostly in Hindi, questions are repeated in English and Mathai’s responses were mostly in English too.]
In the succeeding weeks, more shockers followed – a respected 60-something television actor admitted that he had an illegitimate child; a newly-married husband acknowledged that he would have an affair if his wife never found out; a young Muslim woman admitted that she had been intimate with other men after her engagement; yet another “nice Indian wife” confessed her extra-marital affair – for Indian television viewers, unaccustomed to Oprah-esque confessional talk shows, Sach ka Saamna represented a problematic novelty.
As parliamentarians debated over the cultural threat posed by the show and whether it violated the constitution, psychologists pondered over its “long term effects,” news channels discussed if reality TV “promoted voyeurism” in Indian society, and the High Court debated whether Indian culture was strong enough to withstand the onslaught, viewers gleefully tuned in to watch contestants face their moment of truth and squirm uncomfortably in their seats. For the News Corp.-owned Star Plus, Sach ka Saamna promised to bring back its glory days. After nine years as the numero uno in the Hindi GEC (General Entertainment Channel) segment, Star had lost its stronghold to the new entrant Viacom-owned Colors and old rival Zee TV. Moreover, with its slew of mother-in-law & daughter-in-law sagas, the channel had become branded as a ‘regressive’ network. Sach ka Saamna was Star’s attempt to reposition itself, particularly in response to the changing television audience demographic. As Star’s Executive Vice-President, Marketing and Communications, Anupam Vasudev remarked, “Today, the larger group of the Indian audience has got younger. Audiences have moved away from demanding regressive content to content that evokes an open belief system.”
However, in spite the high TRPs (Television Rating Points) and Star’s contention that the show was modeled on Gandhian principle of truth and honesty – Satyamev Jayate (Truth Alone Triumphs), Sach ka Saamna had to make an early exit only after two months of its debut. The government slapped a show-cause notice on the channel for “offending good taste and decency, (showing what is) not suitable for unrestricted public exhibition, and for obscenity in words.” Moreover, the show seemed to be attracting attention and headlines for all the wrong reasons – a woman committed suicide after watching the season finale and husbands became obsessed with replaying the truth-or-dare game with their wives, often with disastrous consequences. Though the channel honchos are hopeful about Sach ka Saamna‘s return, actor Rajeev Khandelwal, who had received favorable reviews as the host, has already distanced himself from the controversial show. However, knowing Indian television’s current penchant for format and reality shows, Sach ka Saamna, in spite of all the controversy, might just make a comeback.
Like it, or hate it, reality television seems to have the Indian television viewer hooked.