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Wednesday 8 June 2011

Subhash Ghai blames big corporate companies to take new talents beside experienced costly top stars!


The Corporates have changed the economics of filmmaking, tells veteran filmmaker Subhash Ghai who has been making movies for 35 years. He thinks star fees as well as the cost of production have gone up, making most filmmakers run into losses.
"When big corporate companies entered the movie industry, the cost of production as well as the cost of stars witnessed a far-reaching jump. A star used to take Rs.3 crore for a movie, but his or her fees jumped up to Rs.30 crore. These big companies changed the grammar of business," Ghai said.
"There's a lot of competition and to please investors, filmmakers used to say, 'See we are working with a Khan'. The economics went for a roller-coaster ride and after an imbalance, filmmakers suffered losses. Now all the filmmakers are running into losses because they played it the wrong way. The pressure of a star on a producer is too high," included the 66-year-old.
The year 2011 witnesses maximum numbers of newcomers entering Bollywood and Ghai tells filmmakers were forced to work with new talents after the economics of Indian cinema went upside down.
"All filmmakers cannot have enough money to make a film with a budget of Rs.30 crore. Hence they turned to newcomers that are why there are maximum newcomers this year. I would call this the year of new talent and you will see some new stars in 2012," he told.
Ghai is gearing up for the release of two new movies "Love Express" and "Cycle Kick" produced under his banner Mukta Arts. Made with fresh faces, both the movies are releasing June 10.
"Love Express" has 11 newcomers that include directors, actors, sound recordists as well as editors and most of these young talents are from Ghai's film and media school and Whistling Woods International, while for "Cycle Kick" he roped in youngsters from outside his institution.
Ghai tells he has also witnessed a strong change in the tastes of the cinema audience.
"The best pictures were made in the 1950s like 'Sahib Biwi Aur Ghulam' and 'Pyaasa' because at that time only the upper middle class used to watch the movie and the perception of other classes of people was that film watching is not good," told Ghai.
"In the 1970s, the audience was the masses that are right from the illiterate, labour class, to middle class and upper middle class - all used to watch cinema. And then with movies like 'Taal' and 'Dil Chahta Hai', the tastes of people changed.
"Also with the advent of multiplexes, the culture has changed. Today, for people, it (watching a movie) has become an event. The audience is segregated - the masses are separate, classes are separate, students are different, families are different. Now the student audience is 75 percent (of the total)," he included.
An alumnus of the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune (FTII), Ghai started his career as an actor with "Taqdeer" (1967) and also featured in super duper hit "Aradhana" (1969).
He wielded the megaphone for the first time for "Kalicharan" starring Shatrughan Sinha that went on to be a blockbuster. And he continued his successful voyage with "Karz" (1980), "Hero" (1983), "Karma" (1986), "Ram Lakhan" (1989), "Pardes" (1997) and "Taal" (1999).
Post-"Taal", he endeavored into production full-fledged, with Prakash Jha-directed 2001 movie "Rahul", but as a producer he tasted success with "Joggers' Park", "Iqbal" and "Black & White".
In 2006, he opened Whistling Woods International, which provides training in direction, production, editing and all the other technical departments.
Some of his newest releases failed to set the cash registers ringing and Ghai admits his effort to establish Whistling Woods moved his focus away from movies.
"I am not a businessman. I am a writer-director and when I started my institute, I kept on putting money without realizing if I would be able to recover my cost, as a result my films got affected. I kept spending on my institute and now we are running in losses, but gladly. Now I have to make films to compensate losses," Ghai told.

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