Mukkabaaz: Will the film prove the much-needed good omen for Bollywood

The real crisis is monetisation, not content

Anurag Kashyap’s Mukkabaaz opened to rave reviews last week. The story of an aspiring boxer in love with an upper-caste girl mixes sports, politics and caste in small-town Uttar Pradesh to make a hard-hitting cocktail. However, unlike other Kashyap films such as Black Friday (2007) or Gangs of Wasseypur (2012) Mukkabaaz doesn’t pulverise you emotionally. Kashyap aficionados might think he’s been tamed into doing a story that strikes some balance between the wonderful madness that Kashyap’s films are with the need to reach out to more people. On day four, when this is being written, box-office revenues seemed to have picked up.

Mukkabaaz raises two big questions: Is it the harbinger of good news that the beleaguered India film industry needs? And does it mean that the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) has gone back to being the sensible, liberal body it was? Take the first question of 2017 being the annus horribilis. Maybe some of the biggest releases, Jab Harry Met Sejal and Tubelight failed to take off, but the chest-beating is misleading. 

To understand why analyse the list of 52 top Indian films accounting for roughly 75 per cent of box office revenues in 2017 put up by IMDB. It shows that two-thirds of these or 35 films in all made a healthy profit. Baahubali 2 (multilingual), Mersal (Tamil), Hindi Medium (Hindi), Shubh Mangal Saavdhan (Hindi), MCA-Middle Class Abbayi (Telugu) or Munthirivallikal Thalirkkumbol (Malayalam) were among the most profitable. Except for a handful, such as Raees or Baahubali 2, the common factor among all the profitable films is a small-budget — between Rs 80-150 million. Like Apoorva Mehta, CEO, Dharma Productions, says, “A film never fails, its budget does”. So a focus on costs, like all profitable industries, would do Indian studios a world of good. 

The big issue is one of monetisation. More than three-fourth of the Rs 142.3 billion Indian films made came from the domestic box office. Yet India has only 9,000 screens for 1.3 billion people compared to say 40,000 for 1.38 billion Chinese. Dangal, one of biggest hits of 2016-17, sold about 46 million tickets in China making close to Rs 13 billion  at the box office compared to the 53-odd million tickets and about Rs 3.75 billion in India, its home country. The big difference is not just ticket pricing but also the number of screens that Dangal had in China was way higher. For most successful films box office revenues could easily grow by two-three times with more screens. The lack of screens is pushing studios to steadily shorten the window between theatrical and other formats such as TV or online in a bid to increase revenues. These, however, are unable to match the box-office in size. For the last five years the Indian box-office has been more or less stagnant, footfalls are lower and other revenues haven’t risen. 

That is the real crisis, not content. Indian films continue to dig deep into our lives, into books or history and create stories such as Anarkali of Aarah, Vikram Vedha or Tumhari Sulu. Some work, some don’t, that is the nature of creative businesses. 

But if Indian filmmakers are not allowed to tell the stories they want to, the industry’s financial health could get worse. Note that Pakistan, where blasphemy laws and social mores rule, has no film industry. That brings us to question two —  is the CBFC finally changing under new chairman Prasoon Joshi? 

 Over the last two years there have many stand-offs between the increasingly hyper-conservative CBFC and filmmakers over several films such as Udta Punjab and Padmaavat. Mukkabaaz, riddled with caste references and cow-politics, seemed like an ideal film for controversy. But it was cleared by the CBFC with a U/A certificate. 

“I was asked by the board, my intention to make this film and I spoke freely and fearlessly and was accorded the respect of a filmmaker by CBFC. Last time that happened was GOW (Gangs of Wasseypur) #Mukkabaaz” tweeted Kashyap on January 8. And later the same day, “Thank you @prasoonjoshi and @smritiirani and the board and the revising committee panel. Just to be given space to speak freely and fearlessly makes it all so worth it. #Mukkabaaz.”

Clearly it was not just a simple matter of submitting the film. Mukkabaaz remains an exception, for now. 

Twitter: @vanitakohlik