Malayalam Film Industry Sets A Precedent For Others To Emulate

MALAYALAM film industry’s experiment might just be the model to emulate for many ailing film industries in India. Most of the leading film industries like Bollywood (Mumbai), Tollywood (Hyderabad), Kollywood (Chennai), Mollywood (Thiruvananthapuram) are reeling under the heavy weight of the A list stars. Mostly, it would be the remunerations of these stars which is back breaking for any producer and to top that… most of their films tend to become hyper budgeted which would leave the producers crippled altogether.

Shaji Kailas, Kamal, M T Vasudevan Nair & Lal Jose

To put the matter into perspective, just consider these examples…

• In Telugu film industry aka Tollywood, CHIRANJEEVI had been the highest paid actor for most of the second half of his career. In fact, at the fag end of his career, he claimed the distribution rights of most of his films for Nizam area, which is considered the most prized area as Hyderabad falls into it. But after 1998, when CHUDALANI VUNDI (Super Hit) was released, a mere 3 of his 14 highly budgeted releases were successful at the box office and made some profits to everyone involved. The rest of the 11 films made humongous losses for most of the parties involved. In fact, the last 4 films of his career ANDARIVADU (2005), JAI CHIRANJEEVA (2005), STALIN (2006), SANKAR DADA ZINDABAD (2007) are also among the biggest flops of his career. Later, he quit the film industry and joined politics. Another highly remunerated star BALA KRISHNA’s performance has been much more abysmal at the box office with just 1 hit out of 11 films after his blockbuster NARASIMHANAIDU (2001).
• The biggest film industry in India, Bollywood too suffers from these very traits. Take for example the career of ABHISHEK BACHCHAN… he has just around 30% success rate and is still considered an A list star. Even the veteran SALMAN KHAN has an abysmal second half of his career with success rate below 30%, so much so that, most of the big banners have informed his agent to bring down the remuneration if he wants to get signed up for further films.
• Almost every other film industry including Tamil and Kannada has so many similar examples that are making the producers run for cover. Film Making in India has almost become a gambling of sorts for the producers rather than being a Nearly-Calculated-Business-Industry.

So, coming to the current news of a novel experiment to find an alternative to Big-Star-Big-Budget films… 6 low budgeted movies would be made by the Producers Association of Mollywood with prominent directors and writers between 2009-10. All the movies would be budgeted just around Rs 1.5 Crore.

Explaining the current film industry’s scenario and the current experiment… the office bearer of Producer forums G SURESH KUMAR said that depending solely on the Super-Star films doesn’t yield profits anymore as even their movies are biting the dust at the box office. To put the matter in to perspective, he said that only 4 out of the 54 films which came up in the year 2008 ended up as profit makers.

The details of the experiment are as follows…

Ace writer M T VASUDEVAN NAIR will script the 1st movie in the project list, which will be directed by popular director LAL JOSE. Director KAMAL will script and direct the 2nd of the projects while A K SAJAN will once again script for director SHAJI KAILAS for the 3rd venture. Scriptwriter-director RENJITH will be in charge of the 4th movie while the 5th project will be directed by RAFI McCARTIN for MHM productions. Producer SABU CHERIAN and director B UNNIKRISHNAN will unite for the 6th project of the series. Most of the directors who has agreed to do the projects will work on reduced remunerations while most of the movies will feature fresh faces in their cast lists.

INDIAN FILMDOM wishes them good luck and also encourages other film industries to emulate such novel ideas.