2010 has been a year of shameful upsets for Bollywood. “The bigger the name, the worse the fate of his film has been,” says trade consultant Amod Mehra. And most of the huge disasters have come from directors who earn more than Rs 10 crore per film, says a media report.
Out of the 100-odd disasters that Bollywood churned out this year, the following were major flops:
Kites by Anurag Basu,
Raavan by Mani Ratnam,
Guzaarish by Sanjay Leela Bhansali,
Khelein Hum Jee Jaan Sey by Ashutosh Gowariker,
Action Replayy by Vipul Shah,
Aakrosh by Priyadarshan.
The corporates who backed these disasters are staring into a dark deep hole because besides their reported investments on these movies:
Kites approximately Rs 100 crores,
Raavan allegedly Rs 100 crores,
Guzaarish Rs 67 crores,
Khele Hum Jee Jaan Sey Rs 45 crores,
Action Replayy Rs 45 crores and
Aakrosh Rs 35 crores.
The directors who have made these movies have charged a bomb as their personal equity fee.
While Bhansali and Mani have crossed the Rs 20 crore fee bracket, Ashutosh is said to have asked for Rs 16 crores as his personal remuneration for directing (or today as the film industry says for misdirecting) a movie. Priyadarshan, Vipul, Anurag are also in the Rs 10 crore club.
“Hello, shouldn't market fees be equivalent to market deliverables?”' asks a corporate honcho.
Trade analyst Taran Adarsh says, “When a film fails a director has to take the onus for its fate. He is captain of the ship. In the case of most of the makers named above, they are both the producer and the director. In other words almost every department has been under their personal supervision. And so they can't even pass the buck for the failure.”
“One corporation is thinking seriously of shutting shop after making a film with a superstar son,” says an insider.
“And some of the other corporates have been in closed-door meetings to take stock. Hearsay is that two film corporations have been so badly hit with the recent losses, that they are shelving many of their future projects because it will take them forever mto recoup from the losses they have incurred on some of the white elephants that they put their money on in the year gone by.”
