PVR's Ajay Bijli is enjoying the process of juggling film content with commerce, but this weekend it's jogging rather than movies that is taking up his time.
Ajay Bijli has been in training for his sixth marathon — or at least “half-marathon” as his brother Sanjeev, a full marathon runner himself, has been wont to point out to him — which he will run on Sunday morning. “I’ll do it in two hours,” he explains. “Anil Ambani runs the same marathon in an hour and 40 minutes, and he’s older than I am.” And though the last two marathons have been “a struggle,” he laughs, it’s something he still insists on running, to donate the proceeds to his charity venture, PVR Nest.
“I have my own style of practicing,” the managing director of PVR and a fitness enthusiast who has managed to hold on to his weight and his waistline for the last 10 years, says. Which is to say that he runs on a treadmill, set to its maximum of 99 minutes, “so I’ve checked my endurance over 16-17 kilometres”, he says, only a few short of the 21 kilometres that make up a half-marathon. But, as he argues, “All training may be physical, but it also has to be mental.”
And, at least, that’s one area where both fitness and agility have kept him ahead of the pack. He may be just a tad embarrassed talking about his personal life, but observing Bijli talk about films is like watching Bollywood come alive on 70mm, digital Dolby, stereophonic sound… the works. To accentuate the experience, there’s even popcorn on offer in his office in Gurgaon.
As he prepares to rub shoulders with Shah Rukh Khan and Rahul Bose from tinsel town, Bijli’s own cinematic experience has been more visceral. “You either like movies or not,” he says, though it’s not so much movies as screenplays he’s sussing out, having done a course in Los Angeles to understand the creative end of the business. It might have been Aamir Khan who lead Bijli & Co into the movie-making business with, first, Taare Zameen Par and, then, Jaane Tu…Ya Jaane Na (so what if some other productions lost money), but Bijli’s now set his sights firmly on the stardust industry. “Production,” he shares, “takes all my time now.” He adds, “Managing content and finding the finances is the most challenging task in filmmaking but once the creative part is over, the commerce part remains difficult”. Why, even ensuring overall viability is something which, he says, has to be managed within the gambit of star fees, opening attractions and a strong storyline and performances. “Creativity precedes commerce,” Bijli hastens to add, but it’s clear he knows enough to understand that that alone will not make money at the box office.
We’ve been served green tea after a petrified office assistant found the Twinings camomile Bijli had ordered was unavailable in the pantry, and it’s an excellent choice, but even a good cup of tea will not distract the newbie movie producer. “Costings, to me, is a bigger issue than creativity,” which is why he insists on cherry-picking his directors, who range from Neeraj Pandey (whose A Wednesday he liked) to Raj Kumar Gupta of Aamir to, even, the blockbuster director Ashutosh Gowarikar who’s latest What’s Your Rashee? bombed at the BO. Film directors, he laughs — and he laughs a lot, easily and unselfconsciously — are “creative butterflies”, but he’s signed on Gowarikar to produce a film starring Abhishek Bachchan and Asin based on the Chittagong uprising. “It’s an uplifting screenplay,” he says of the film, tentatively titled Khelein Hum Jee Jaan Se.
As producer, it isn’t just content and finances Bijli looks into, also recommending the stars, the directors and other talents he says he’s good at spotting. An unabashed Abhay Deol fan, he’s signed on the reticent actor in a three-film deal, the first of which is Ayesha based on Jane Austen’s Emma with Sonam Kapoor in the lead, the second is a film titled Basra while a third is still to be finalised. Basra will be directed by Neeraj Pandey, who has also been signed on for a two-picture deal with PVR Pictures. “I keep my ears and eyes open,” he confirms, “I’m not just someone who cuts the cheques, I need the satisfaction of having a point of view.” Warming to the theme, he adds, “A script should be genre-agnostic”, meaning that a horror film should scare the daylights out of you, a comedy should tickle your funny bone, an action movie should be replete with thrills. “But the newer generation of viewers are more discerning,” he points out, “they need a story, the screenplay has to be right, then come the performances, the execution, the magical moments…”.
These technicalities, I ask, do they interfere with his movie-watching? “To an extent, yes,” he chortles, “I’m aware of act one, act two, act three, act four, the conflict, the resolution.” But more than the movie, he critiques the experience, a reason why the PVR team probably dreads his appearance at their screens. “He’ll point out that the blanket came too late,” — in Premiere or Gold class — “that the service was too tardy, that the screening wasn’t without a hitch,” says someone who knows him, “It’s one reason why his wife prefers they go to the competition to watch a film, or just get the movie DVD home.”
If he’s worked out that really expensive movies like Blue, which he distributed, aren’t going to make money “because there aren’t enough multiplexes or visitations to the cinema” yet, the other arms of the PVR group’s businesses haven’t been ignored by the Bijli brothers. The exhibition business — which means multiplexes to you and me — with 95 screens in 22 multiplexes in 14 cities currently, is set to grow by 30-40 screens annually for the next few years. “We’ll add 32 new screens this financial year,” he outlines the company’s development plans, adding 10 new cities to its mix, and “a second tranche in existing markets, where we’ve found better locations or malls, with a quality tenancy mix”. These multiplexes will typically be “a little larger, seven-10 screens, most of them digital”.
A gap the company has filled is its bowling format, PVR Blue-O, for which it has a joint venture with Thailand-based Major Cineplex Group. “The typical format for these is 30,000-40,000 sq ft adjacent to multiplexes in all the new malls,” besides which it will also push “ice skating rinks and food malls”, wrapping up the entertainment experience for a certain age demographic.
Independent CEOs run these companies. “Sanjeev and I are involved,” he explains their working model, “but we don’t get into their hair.” There is, also, the distribution end of the cinema business, where”we leverage our own cinema screens” for a mix of Bollywood and Hollywood releases, so they don’t have to pay “minimum guarantees”, something he claims keeps other producers happy. With four-six movies in the production pipeline annually for the next few years, there’s enough on Bijli’s plate — popcorn included! — to keep him more than just running for a while.
Now to see whether he breaks his record, or merely matches it.
