Producing Bollywood: Inside the Contemporary Hindi Film Industry (58 page)

1
. Apropos of the nature of the Hindi film industry already discussed in the book, the exact figures of how much Fox paid for the distribution rights is never confirmed.
Film Information
(Nahta 2009a) first reported that the sum was 80
crore
(800 million) and a subsequent issue (Bhatia 2010) stated the sum was 85
crore
(850 million); a report in the
Business Standard
(Sinha 2009) pegged the figure at over 100
crore
(1 billion rupees). At the exchange rates prevailing in August 2009, when the deal was announced, Fox’s cost of acquisition was approximately between $16 and $17 million. The film was in the news once again around the time of its release in February 2010, because the Shiv Sena, an ethnic and Hindu chauvinist political party in Maharashtra, warned exhibitors across the state to boycott the film or face the ire of the party, on account of Khan’s statements of regret about Pakistani cricketers not being drafted for the cricket teams comprising the Indian Premier League. Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackeray asserted that Khan was anti-national and anti-Mumbai and demanded an apology, in the absence of which, party members would protest and disrupt the screenings of mnik—a pattern that always involved a great deal of vandalism and destruction of property. Khan refused to apologize for his statements. The film opened as scheduled in Bombay cinemas; under a great deal of police protection, including pre-emptive arrests of hundreds of Sena party workers, but some theaters were still vandalized by Sena members. The whole episode monopolized much of the news headlines in India for that week.

2
. The review of mnik in
The Hollywood Reporter
, however, portrays a slightly different picture of Fox’s strategy, at least with respect to the United States and Europe, implying that the company either did not make an effort or was complacent in the way they tried to promote the film. It states, “The film is getting released in India, North America, and many other territories February 12, but its North American distributor, Fox Searchlight, adopted the puzzling strategy of playing the film out of competition here at the Berlinale, but refusing to screen it to U.S. press ahead of its release. . . it’s a pity that the non-Indian press are discouraged from shouting out the news about a film that delves compellingly into Americans’ anti-Muslim hysteria” (Honeycutt 2010).

3
.
Film Information
’s review was pessimistic about the film’s commercial prospects. It stated, “On the whole,
My Name Is Khan
is far from entertaining, and [it is] also too boring for the general masses. It will be liked, probably even loved, by the Muslim classes and by the audiences abroad. But for the heavy budget at which it has been sold, it will keep either its worldwide distributors (Fox Searchlight) or those to whom they have further sold the rights, in the red. Business in big cities, especially in South India, Muslim centres, and Overseas will be better, but it will be below the mark in North India as also in smaller centres and single-screen cinemas. It may be appreciated by the class audience, but a large chunk of the masses will reject the film. The controversy surrounding the film will definitely help boost its collections” (Nahta 2010b). The following week’s issue of the trade magazine seemed to have its predictions confirmed when it reported, “The collections in the Overseas territory of mnik are absolutely fantastic. . . but the response on home ground is definitely not up to mark, as is evident from the sharp decline in collections from Monday onwards” (Nahta 2010a).

4
. For example, in the above-mentioned interview with
rediff.com
, Johar used the examples of the film’s commercial performance in Indonesia and Poland as indicative of the film’s cross-cultural appeal. About Indonesia he asserted, “If a Hindi language film grossed about $75,000 there, it is considered excellent, but our film struck a chord, and it became a sleeper hit grossing over $1.6 million.” Regarding Poland, “It grossed about $75,000 in its first week, which is very good for a territory like Poland. I believe the second week is even stronger” (Pais 2010).

5
. Sony co-produced
Saawariya
(Beloved, 2007) directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali, and Warner Bros. co-produced
Chandni Chowk to China
(2009) directed by Nikhil Advani.

6
. In July 2011, Disney made an offer to buy out utv for $454 million in order to expand its filmmaking operations in India (Gokhale 2011).

7
. Reliance ada (Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group) is one of India’s largest conglomerates, with dealings in communications, financial services, power, and infrastructure. According to their website, they have a market capitalization of $81 billion, net assets exceeding $29 billion, and a net worth of $14 billion. The website also states that the group has a “business presence that extends to over 20,000 towns and 450,000 villages in India, and five continents across the world” (
http://www.relianceadagroup.com/ada/overview.html
).

8
. Anil Ambani, the chair of Reliance ada, the parent company of Reliance Big, was quoted in
Variety
, “Our partnership with Stacey and Steven is the cornerstone of our Hollywood strategy as we grow our film interests across the globe” (McClintock 2009).

9
. In 2011, Johar won the award for best director for mnik in three out of four annual awards ceremonies that felicitate Hindi filmmaking: the Filmfare Awards; the Zee Cine Awards; and the Apsara Awards. mnik was also awarded the “Best Marketed Film” title—the first award of its kind—at the Zee Cine Awards function.

10
. I was not present at the ceremony, but watched it on television in New York City on the Indian satellite channel, Star Plus, that is available as part of Verizon’s Fios Networks’ South Asian Package. Ramnath Goenka was the founder of the newspaper
Indian Express
, and the Ramnath Goenka Memorial Foundation and Trust was established in his memory in 1992, to encourage and promote high-quality journalism. The Indian Express Group publishes
Screen
, a weekly newspaper that focuses on the entertainment industries in India, primarily the Hindi film and television industries centered in Bombay. The Ramnath Goenka Memorial Award is a special award that “recognizes excellence in cinema” and is awarded to a “filmmaker who dares to make a difference in society with his work” (
http://in.movies.yahoo.com
).

11
. Footage of this entire sequence can be viewed on YouTube (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ePKl76LbhY
).

12
. In the February 20, 2010, issue of
Film Information
, an article about mnik asserted, “Though mnik will probably prove, according to trade pundits, a losing proposition for worldwide distributor Fox due to the huge price it paid for it, there is no denying that mnik has been wonderful for the Hindi film industry.” The reason being that mnik was the “most widely exploited Hindi film in recent times. The Shah Rukh Khan starrer is the first Hindi film to be dubbed in German and Turkish languages; while it is too early to say how the dubbed versions will fare, they may create fresh markets for our industry. Also very significantly, Fox will be releasing a shortened ‘Americanised’ version of mnik in the United States and related markets. That too may generate curiosity in those markets and the Bollywood idiom and songs may enchant foreigners” (Bhatia 2010: 22).

13
. One could also argue that the film’s own distributors had not anticipated the film’s success. Warner Bros., the film’s original studio backer, was skeptical of the film’s commercial viability and had plans to release it directly on dvd, forgoing a theatrical release, after its small-budget film division, Warner Independent, shut down in May 2008. Fox Searchlight bought the rights for theatrical distribution from Warner (Walker 2009).

14
. Prominent examples include
Om Shanti Om, Once Upon a Time in Mumbai, Action
Replayy.

15
.
Dabangg
won the Best Film category at the
Filmfare
Awards, Zee Cine Awards, the Apsara Awards, and the iifa Awards.

16
. Such regimes are especially evident in sites such as international film festivals: Cannes; Toronto; Venice; Berlin, where unofficial quotas exist for films that are marked as representing a national cinema in the case of non–Euro-American contexts, but not for films from the United States, France, Britain, etc., which serve as the unmarked representatives of “cinema” or “world/international” cinema.

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