A rare second chance

Old studios are gung-ho about colourising old classics and giving them a second life.

Success has many offspring, failure none. After the box-office success of the coloured version of Mughal-e-Azam in 2004, a number of producers of black & white classic films have undertaken similar exercises.

Most notable among these are Ravi Chopra, whose coloured version of his father, B R Chopra's 1957 classic Naya Daur will release on October 3, and Dev Anand whose Hum Dono, restored and coloured for today's audiences, will hit the theatres sometime next year.

There's more coming from both. Chopra says he has lined up seven films from his father's B&W oeuvre "" notably Gumraah, Kanoon, Dhool ka Phool "" for pigmentation, releasing one every six months after Naya Daur.

Navketan Films's contract with Goldstone Media, the Hyderabad-based company that's working on Hum Dono, extends to 3-4 more movies. There's even talk of Sahib, Bibi Aur Ghulam (which is also being remade), among a host of other Guru Dutt films like Pyaasa and Kaagaz ke Phool, being pigmented.

It is obviously the waves that Mughal-e-Azam made, which brought on the realisation that old, classic content could be monetised anew by colourising them, that is inspiring this new trend.

The colour Mughal-e-Azam released on November 12, 2004 with 150 prints, which popular demand pushed up to 225 prints with releases in Pakistan, the US and UK. It ran for a hundred days in 14 theatres, and went for silver jubilee in two of those, grossing roughly Rs 50 crore for the Rs 15-20 crore spent on the pigmentation, re-mastering, changing to stereophonic.

Plus, there were the takings from satellite rights sold to Sony and VCD/DVD rights to Shemaroo. The other impulse, and Chopra claims this is driving him, is the need to "preserve the films so that they are not lost to future generations".

But can the magic of the coloured Mughal-e-Azam, its popular success, be replicated? Especially a film like Naya Daur that was so rooted in outmoded Nehruvian philosophy. Chopra is hopeful that it can. "The story is fantastic, for one. And its central message, that man and machine can coexist, is relevant even today.

In fact, I am looking at a pan-India release for Naya Daur with around 100 prints." For others like Gumraah and Kanoon, where the drama is less rooted in the times in which it is set, Chopra will target the multiplexes. And then there's marketing, of course, which can make or break the film, and Chopra is looking at TV promos (already on air), music release (remastered 5.1 Dolby digital surround sound), DVD/VCD and so on.

And it is not just B&W Bollywood classics that are being coloured. Says Jagan Mohan, unit head, Goldstone Media, "Of the 15 films that we've signed on to restore and colour, around seven are from the south. There's Raj Kumar's Satya Harishchandra, on which we've already done a lot of work, and 4-5 of N T Rama Rao's films." 
 

MOVIE SIGNED UP FOR COLOURISATION

Hindi:

Hum Dono

Kannada:

Satya Harichandra

Telugu:

Sri Krishna Arjuna Yuddam 

Bhatti Vikramarka 

Chikkadu Dorakadu  

Bhale Rangadu 

Shanti Nivasam 

Shabash Suri 

Raaju Peda 

Edureeta 

Karpoora haarati 

Vimala 

Sampoorna Ramayanam 

Baala Raju 

Aggi Raamudu 

Shabash Raamudu 

Krishna Maya 

The company is also getting many more enquiries from Bollywood and Mohan expects to announce a tie-up with two big ticket studios shortly.

One factor that could be holding back producers of B&W classics, many of whom have either closed shop or no longer have the high profile they once had, is the cost of restoring and colouring. And it is expensive.

"Restoring, converting into cinemascope and the audio-track into 5.1 6-channel Dolby, pigmentation can cost anywhere between Rs 50 lakh to Rs 4 crore, depending on whether it is a social, folklore or a historical movie. Obviously, the last would require much more work." Hum Dono, says Mohan, cost about Rs 5 crore.

Goldstone, however, has a revenue-sharing agreement with Navketan Films which cuts down on the costs as also mitigates some of the risks for the producer. So Goldstone Media now has the rights to release the coloured Hum Dono, and Mohan reports that he is in talks with a number of digital cinema networks, as also distributors in the West and IPTV networks in Europe for distributing the film.

Goldstone Media is a subsidiary of Goldstone Technologies, an IT services company, which tied up earlier this month with Legend Films Inc, a US based studio. Legend Films is the global leader in this area and has a proprietory technology in restoration and colourisation of films.

"We have the capacity to use millions of colours which will lead to an extraordinary life-like effect, compared to previous technologies where not more than 34-60 colours could be used."

Legend Films, however, is not the only global player eyeing the Indian space here. West Wing Studios, another US-bsed company which has colourised Naya Daur at its unit in Goa has, over the past four years that it has been around, worked on several episodes of Three Stooges, a Steve McQueen-Robert Wagner film, and War Lover.

K P Prabhu, director of the Goa unit, says, "It takes a team of 100 technicians one eight-hour work shift to pigment two seconds. No wonder it is expensive."

But the costs may come down with Goldstone Media increasing its manpower from the current 50 to 120. Mohan expects his output to increase from two films in a year at present to 20-24. "That should bring down costs by as much as 40-50 per cent." And a lot more classics for us to watch.