Big-budget films continue to flop: More movies shelved as Bollywood stops looking for stars

Bombay: Hindi Film industry He has seen 30-40 big budget movies have been filed in the past year and a half, a marked increase from the pre-pandemic average of 10 to 15 a year, according to trade analysts, raising new concerns in Bollywood despite some recent relief brought by the success of some mid-sized launches.

Big-budget films like Rakshas and Baiju Bawra (Ranveer Singh); Ganpat 2, Rambo and Hero No.1 (Tiger Shroff); Hera Pheri 3 (Akshay Kumar); Draupadi (Deepika Padukone) and Mr Lele (Varun Dhawan) are among the projects with marquee stars that have been shelved, industry observers said. Such films account for 30-40% of all the projects announced during the period when the Hindi film industry has seen several releases that have failed to make an impact in the market. Box officeProducers and trade analysts told ET that three key factors have made releasing a Hindi film increasingly unviable: high costs linked to remuneration of stars and their entourages, promotion, marketing and publicity; lack of confidence in the commercial viability of existing scripts that do not align with changing audience tastes and failure of stars to deliver good box office openings.

Content is king
“Nowadays, stars cannot guarantee you a good box office release. The industry needs to accept this,” said Tanuj Garg, managing partner of production house Ellipsis Entertainment. “Before the pandemic, actors and directors were working on high fees. This was impractical and unsustainable.” This is a wake-up call and the Hindi film industry is thinking about what is viable and what is not, he said.

“It is quite clear that high-concept films are the ones that work at the box office and not big stars. So, the content of a film has to work,” said Garg of Ellipsis Entertainment. After the pandemic, streaming platforms They increased their spending on buying movies and creating original content. They invested in actors who were not in the A-list category, paying them about three times the fees they were charging before, industry analysts said.

This became a benchmark in the industry. But these players were unable to deliver a reasonably good opening to their films at the box office. After the list of films that failed to make a mark became long and their focus shifted to profitability, streaming platforms reduced their average spend on acquiring a film. According to Ficci-EY’s Media and Entertainment Industry Report 2024, the number of films released directly on these platforms dropped to 57 in 2023 from 105 in 2022. This impacted the revenues of producers. The total revenue from the sale of digital rights of films fell to Rs 3,500 crore in 2023 from the peak of Rs 4,000 crore in 2021, the data in the Ficci-EY report shows.

“Today, more than 50% of the cost of a film goes towards remuneration of stars,” says Shaaminder Malik, an industry analyst and film distributor. “Take the recent Hindi film Khel Khel Mein as an example. The budget of the film is Rs 150 crore. The film was shot almost entirely indoors,” he says. “Why does such a film require such a high budget? It is clear that a major part of the film’s budget has gone towards remuneration of stars and their entourage. Despite this, the film has collected less than Rs 40 crore at the box office.”

According to industry insiders, the financial dynamics within the Hindi film industry have reached a point where scriptwriters earn less than what is spent on a star’s entourage. After covering these substantial costs, producers are hesitant to allocate more funds for Movie promotion and advertising, which creates a lack of public awareness about new releases and their release dates, which can seriously affect the success of a film.

On an average, the promotion, marketing and publicity cost associated with a medium- or big-budget film is estimated to be in the range of Rs 8-15 crore. Malik said, “The stupendous success of Stree 2 lies not only in its franchise value but also in its tight budget and strong, sustained marketing and promotion.” Girish Johar, producer and industry expert, said, “A sense of pragmatism has prevailed among producers today. The entire focus has shifted towards a thorough review of costs and revenue streams.”