New Delhi-Indian movie baron Pritish Nandy hoped to spend this spring in Calcutta shooting Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam, a coming-of-age film set i...
New Delhi-Indian movie baron Pritish Nandy hoped to spend this spring in Calcutta shooting Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam, a coming-of-age film set in the early 1940s. He planned to raise enough money to have a robust budget and envisioned stirring scenes shot in the grubby slums where Mother Teresa once ministered to the destitute.The movie, which translates to "Master, Wife and Servant," was to be the remake of a Bollywood classic, the story of a wide-eyed peasant who moves from the country to a rich family's mansion. "We were looking at a $12 million (all figures U.S.) budget, a lot of money," said Nandy, a one-time newspaper journalist and politician.
Trouble was, even with Nandy's good track record making films that make money, he couldn't find a bank willing to lend him the $6 million he needed for his film.
"We have the website, we have an agreement with (Indian movie star) Salman Khan to play the lead, we have everything ready. We just have to wait for things in the industry to get better," Nandy said by telephone from Mumbai.
Nandy is biding time working on low-cost fare such as comedies and he isn't alone.
Even as the world seems entranced with India's motion-picture industry after the runaway success of Slumdog Millionaire, filmmakers, producers and actors alike are feeling the same pinch that's shelved a flurry of Hollywood projects, say movie executives here.
Smita Jha, an associate director of PricewaterhouseCoopers's media and entertainment division, estimates some 20 per cent of Hindi movies scheduled to be made this year have been scrapped altogether or postponed.
India's film industry churns out about 1,000 titles a year. Some 250 of those are Bollywood pictures, known for lavish music and dancing scenes, with an average budget of about $2 million.
The cancellation of 50 Bollywood movies alone would represent a loss of at least $100 million to the business. That loss may be wider, Jha said, because many other projects have been scaled back drastically.
The country's top film stars commanded upwards of $20 million per picture five years ago. Now average fees have plunged 50 per cent, said Anirban Das Blah, a talent agent whose clients include Slumdog star Freida Pinto.
But the tough times haven't meant Indians are avoiding movies. The average ticket price here is about 50 cents. Ticket sales in India are responsible for about 75 per cent of the country's $3.25 billion film business. About 10 per cent comes from overseas ticket and video sales. The balance of revenue comes from cable TV and satellite rights, and mobile-phone tie-ins.
India's film industry started almost a century ago. Romantic musicals were popular during the last days of the British Raj before action adventure and gangster films took off in the 1960s and 1970s.
By the 1990s, as international banks began to pour money into Indian cinema and film budgets, and actor's salaries began to skyrocket, the industry was overshadowed by the criminal underworld.
In 2000, the father of Bollywood star Hrithik Roshan was shot by gangsters trying to extort the actor. (He survived.) The criminals wanted Roshan to hand over overseas rights to one of his new movies. Many Bollywood stars were put under round-the-clock protection.
Now most of the city's crime lords have either been killed off or arrested and filmmakers spend more time worrying about financing than kidnappings.
It isn't only yet-to-be-made movies that have been hurt by India's cinema industry slowdown.
Mumbai filmmaker Govind Menon wrapped up shooting last month on his horror picture Hisss, about an ancient snake goddess who becomes human and goes on a venom-laced killing spree.
The movie features Irrfan Khan, who plays a detective investigating the murders. Khan starred in Slumdog as the police inspector.
"I thought there'd be a market for something original," Menon said. "In the 1970s and '80s you had (Stanley) Kubrick and (Roman) Polanski making great movies. There was really interesting stuff like The Shining. But lately it's gotten really stale, and the good horror movies like The Grudge and The Ring have been remakes of foreign movies."
Menon figured he could make his film for about $4 million. Weather problems extended shooting to 60 days from 48 and the cost of his film rose by about $1 million.
Now in Los Angeles, Menon is hoping to sell his picture to a studio and trying to temper his expectations.
"It's a dead business right now," he said.
Slumdog's success hasn't insulated India from the film industry's slowdown, Menon said, noting Slumdog starred a British actor (Dev Patel), had a British director (Danny Boyle), foreign financing and its post-production work was done outside India.
"It was shot in India, but it's no more Indian than The Last Emperor is a Chinese movie," said Menon, 42.
"I don't think anyone expects there are other Slumdogs out there waiting to be made by Indian filmmakers. It's a movie that comes along only once a few years, like a Little Miss Sunshine."
Menon said he isn't sure what he'll do next.
"Most filmmakers do a $5 million picture and hope they can move on to do a $10 million project," he said. "I've got two possibilities right now. One is a $2 million project and the other is one that's $500,000. That's the reality nowadays in India. There's going to be a few big-picture movies every year, and the rest are going to be small budget stuff ... YouTube movies."
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