ABC of Bollywood’s current mess: Arrogant stardom, banal films and crazy streaming deals

Let’s get one thing clear first. All this talk of the boycott brigade adversely affecting the Bollywood box office is a myth. If trailers and songs going viral pre-release cannot automatically guarantee hit status for a new release, then the converse is also true. People will watch what they want to, irrespective of negative social media clamour. Calls to shun a film or films featuring particular stars don’t dissuade people from watching.

Hindi releases have ended up flops lately because the fun factor somehow seems to be missing from the way Bollywood makes its movies. A lack of involvement, enthusiasm and originality is showing. In turn, most recent releases have been banal fare that failed to interest the ticket-paying audience. Globally, this is not the best of times for cinema — an awful truth attested by the news last week that Cineworld, the world’s second-largest cinema chain, has filed for bankruptcy after accruing debts to the tune of $4.8 billion in the post-Covid scenario. In India, too, the audience has been cutting down on movie-watching budgets for quite some time now. Bollywood needs to get back its groove of the glory days when Hindi filmmaking was about carefree relish, when mainstream entertainers were about catering all-out fun.

For, that is precisely what has been working for the latest releases from the South that have found favour at the pan-India box office. Pushpa: The Rise — Part 01, RRR, KGF 2, and the recent Karthikeya 2 were all big screen entertainers in the truest sense of the term, which regaled viewers with larger-than-life zest. The advent of OTT has created a clear-cut demarcation. By and large, the audience prefers to visit theatres only if they feel the film in question is an event release. If they feel a film is too routine or lacking in originality, they prefer waiting for its launch in the streaming domain. This goes for all theatrical releases, be it Bollywood, Hollywood, films from the South or anywhere else. Not surprisingly, while many of Bollywood’s top superstars bit the dust, the only commercial Hindi film to hit the bullseye this year is the Kartik Aaryan-starrer Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2, an out-and-out entertainer with a wacky premise. The film has done a lifetime global business of over Rs 260 crore. Bollywood’s only other success in 2022 so far is The Kashmir Files, a blockbuster. The Vivek Agnihotri genocide drama scored high in terms of return on investment (ROI), raking in over Rs 330 crore globally against a reported budget of around Rs 15-20 crore. Almost every other Hindi film released this year so far can be categorised as either shoddily conceived and executed products, or as efforts that basically packaged old cliches in a new wrap and failed to woo the ticket-paying audience.

The industry’s reaction to the situation has amusingly been one of arrogance and indifference. Most stars, on being quizzed about the current scenario, have taken the “if you don’t like me, don’t watch my film” line. The haughty attitude perhaps explains the lack of involvement, which in turn translates to the ongoing lacklustre run of Hindi films. The ego of a filmstar is often buoyed by the impression that his celebrity stature will remain intact no matter what. Bollywood, after all, has managed to find a way to survive everything in the past, including the advent of national television, video and cable piracy, and satellite television.

Take a look at the industry’s box office charts over the past two decades or so, and you would find 70 to 90 per cent releases in any given year have flopped. Only a handful of releases manage to attain a hit status every year. Over the years, Hindi filmstars and their producers have learnt to reduce dependency on theatrical intake, managing to recover costs and make profits through other channels. For a while, there were the satellite TV rights, along with other revenue sources such as home video rights, music rights and overseas rights. A producer could guarantee himself a financial safety net by simply selling the various rights long before his film’s release, as long as he had a saleable star toplining his cast.

Like everything Bollywood, the pattern crafted itself into a formula, a scenario that let mediocrity thrive. Stars as well as producers perfected the trick of earning money and fame without investing much of creativity or originality. Then, the advent of online dissemination of entertainment changed everything. TV rights and home video became history, and to worsen things the film music scene started drying up. Smalltown stories were becoming the trend and NRI tales shot abroad were no longer in vogue, which meant demand in the overseas market began shrinking, too. Bollywood stars, it would seem, were running out of options to ensure their films recovered money despite poor theatrical runs.

That’s when Instagram and OTT happened in India. Social media, especially Instagram, soon emerged as an outlet that could allow stars to enjoy a fan following without delivering a proper hit in years. The definition of stardom had moved away from the ability to score box office hits to maintaining a follower count. Go nude, go ethnic or just go cuddling your pooch — if you’re a celebrity it’s all good to score a ‘hit’, and it’s lucrative, too. Anyway, these days, when Bollywood buffs are not checking out vacay pics of the stars on Instagram, there’s always a well-oiled PR machinery to feed filmi news portals with paparazzi snapshots of airport arrivals.

If Insta stardom adversely affects the hunger to excel creatively, OTT has ensured the big money continues pouring in irrespective of a film’s box office fate. OTT platforms today are what satellite TV channels were to the 2000s and the 2010s. Even as the craze among television channels to buy Bollywood biggies slowed down, the OTT revolution arrived as a saviour for the industry. Ever since their advent, streaming platforms have been on a frenzy to hoard old and new films and shows across genres, in order to stock up their libraries. Bollywood films, traditionally enjoying a permanent space in the popular mindspace, have been among the highest gainers. The major players in the OTT market are all big brands or have big business backing them and, unlike the theatrical release scene, they are in no rush to recover costs. It is a reason these streaming sites have so far been willing to dole out hundreds of crores to big star-cast films such as Radhe and 83, never mind that they fared below expectations in the theatres.

While such staggering deals work wonders to inflate filmi egos, they certainly do not goad our stars to deliver quality entertainment.

(All figures according to film trade estimates)

Vinayak Chakravorty is a critic, columnist and film journalist based in Delhi-NCR.

Read all the Latest News, Trending News, Cricket News, Bollywood News, India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.