Celluloid partnership

What is common between Hindi films Swades and Main Hoon Na?

Other than the fact that Shah Rukh Khan featured in both the films, the two fall in the co-productions category. While Swades was jointly produced by UTV and Ashutosh Gowariker Productions, for Main Hoon Na, the music company Venus Records & Tapes joined hands with Shah Rukh Khan's Red Chillies Entertainment.

A recent Yes Bank report on Bollywood (emerging business trends and growth drivers) states that in 2004 at least 15 Hindi films were jointly produced.

This means that over Rs 100 crore of the total film productions were joint ventures.

Among 2004's co-productions were Farhan Akthar's Rs 35 crore Lakshya ( a collaborative effort between Excel Entertainment and UTV), Maqbool (Kaleidoscope Entertainment and Vishal Bharardwaj Pictures) and Govind Nihalani's Dev (Applause Entertainment and Entertainment One).

In 2005 films such as Namesake (UTV and 20thCentury Fox), D ( UTV and RamGopal Verma Productions) and Kaal (Karan Johar and Shahrukh) have been co-produced.

Says Ronnie Screwvala, CEO, UTV Software Communications: "Today people are realising the importance of elements like creative, production, commerce, marketing and distribution that go into making a commercially successful motion picture."

The report states that, the number of co-productions has increased from three in 2001 to 15 in 2004. Co-productions can be creative or financial.

In creative co-productions, one or more partners contribute to the creative process while the rest manage the financial resources.

In financial co-productions, all the partners contribute finances to produce the film.

Financial co-productions have increased from zero to 10 between 2001 and 2004 and an increase in creative/production associations from three in 2001 to five in 2004.

Filmmakers like Yash Chopra, Subhash Ghai and Sooraj Barjatya have always made movies under their home production banner.

Says Kacun Sethi, CEO, K Sera Sera Productions, this was possible as the filmmakers in question have been at the creative helm and have also been good businessmen.

But today, not necessarily all professionally-run production houses are creatively strong. Hence, co-productions are seen as a surest way of leveraging creative skills from outside along with an in-house production and business skills, she adds.

K Sera Sera has a 10-films deal with Sahara One Motion pictures where it has worked along with Ram Gopal Varma Productions for movies like Naach and Ek Hasina Thi.

Sunir Kheterpal, country head, Entertainment and Media banking, Yes Bank, points out: "Increase in financial co-productions is expected to continue over the coming years because of higher propensity to work in projects involving lower financial risk."