Media Monday- Bollywood Producers turning into Politicians?

There was a time when Producers/Directors of a movie would only interact with media after the Movie did a tremendous business. The promotional costs of a movie were 1-2% of the total budget, and most of the marketing happened through word-of-mouth only. But then came multiplexes and whole scenario changed. It didn’t take time for Producers to realize that they can actually recover most of the money during first 2 weeks itself. The concept of distributors came into picture and the rules of the game changed.

Today, Bollywood business depends more on false promises, fake numbers and lavish promotions. Producers have understood that if they can run all the Cinemas house-full for 2 continuous weeks they can recover/earn all the money. Even after a movie gets bad response, producers would big-mouth about their success in terms of how much money they have made. This proves that Bollywood is more about politics these days than entertainment.

Extraordinarily hyped movie, Kites has been getting real bad response from Indian audiences. I have even seen people demanding (and actually getting) their money back from Big Cinemas (Ansal Plaza, Gurgaon) for their time and money spent :). But the promotions and bragging is not going to stop until Producers see all their money coming back to their pockets. Or, they lose all the steam. The fact remains that real sufferers in such cases are always the distributors of the movie. Producers create a hype and by the time movie is going to release they would increase the print costs by 50-60% and sell it to the distributors.

As the movie hits the screen and gets real response from audience then only distributors are able to anticipate whether they would make any money or not. Sometimes in an effort to make quick money distributors increase the ticket prices (remember 3 Idiots case?).

In all the above cases its either the audience or the distributor who gets cheated. Producers make their money and come after 1-2 years with a new hype and new title. In my opinion distributors should demand a pre-screening of the movie before buying any print, and their should be a consensus among all distributors that they would not buy any print without watching at least 40-50% content of the movie. I know its not easily acceptable but they need to do this for a fairer market. That way we can stop this bubble from getting created! What’s your thought on this?