If the actor finds a film interesting, he decides to produce it; he then examines the project’s financial viability.
Exactly 10 years ago, Aamir Khan’s production, Lagaan, created quite a stir in the global film market. The reason: It was only the third Indian film to get an Oscar nomination in the category of best foreign film, after Mother India and Salaam Bombay.
Aamir – a perfectionist to the core – did everything to aggressively market the film to discerning audiences in Hollywood, taking full-page advertisements in trade journals like Variety and Hollywood Reporter and ensuring that he was personally present in Los Angeles to supervise his movie’s screening among Oscar panelists, the media and all those who mattered in the world of cinema. But the movie did not make the cut on the final day, even though it received critical acclaim.
| THE PERFECT NUMBERS | ||
| Film | Budget | Worldwide box office collection |
| Lagaan | Rs 25 crore | Rs 75 crore |
| Taare Zameen Par | Rs 15 crore | Rs 128 crore |
| Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na | Rs 13 crore | Rs 110 crore |
| Peepli Live | Rs 10 crore | Rs 50 crore |
| Dhobi Ghaat | Rs 11 crore | Rs 14 crore |
| Source: Aamir Khan Productions | ||
Ask Aamir what he learnt from the experience of making the Rs 25 crore extravaganza, and the answer is rather out-of-the-box. No, it did not make him savvier in marketing his films in the Oscars or Hollywood. Instead, the intense yet soft-spoken actor says: “The most important thing I learnt from producing Lagaan is that never take the responsibility of distributing the film on your own. I understand the creative part of making a film, but I am too trusting and don’t understand the distribution business at all. So I need a partner.”
Ten years later, it is this lesson that has been at the core of his production house, Aamir Khan Productions, which is all set to launch its new film, Delhi Belly, starring Imran Khan, on 1 July.
Khan has had a string of box office successes in the last few months — including Peepli Live and Dhobi Ghat — all of which have been out-of-the-box films. But Khan says that his production house never does a movie on its own. It always gets into joint venture collaborations with a company that understands the distribution game. “For Tare Zameen Par we co-produced the movie with PVR Cinemas, Delhi Belly is co-produced with UTV. Both of them understand the distribution business, which I don’t.”
The model is simple – in movies where Aamir thinks the risk is high, the distribution company puts in a larger share of the cost and, therefore, in case of an upside, gets more. In most other movies the equation is 50:50. While the distribution company brings cash to the table, Aamir’s contribution is valued based on what he brings to the table – he could be acting in the movie (so his value as an actor is imputed), directing the movie and his production house would be making the movie and providing all the creative elements.
“I believe in this model. I can ensure that everyone who is working with me makes money, so if my co-producer takes more risks he should get a larger share of the upside also,” says Khan.
While he says he does not understand business, Aamir has been savvy enough not to sell his movie before the launch to a distribution company. He prefers to take the risk and get the upside. “I must be confident of what I am making. I should not pass on the risk to someone else because I fear that it might not succeed,” he argues.
Khan believes that the strategy of mitigating risk by passing it on to someone has led to a large number of failures in Bollywood, where the flop list is only getting bigger. If a production house makes a film for Rs 10 crore and sells it to a large movie company with distribution rights for Rs 50 crore before the movie is released, it makes a profit of Rs 40 crore. But if the movie does not make more than Rs 50 crore the company that bought it is dead, while the production house is not impacted, he explains.
The star says that there has been a period of insanity in the market. “Film producers were asking for 10 per cent more than the highest grosser that they have ever made, and there are companies that are ready to pay that money. There is no sanity and obviously they don’t make money,” argues Khan.
Khan is also pretty clear that he does not want to extend his empire by compromising his creativity. He says he is not thinking big. So he is at peace with the fact that his production house has made six films in 10 years. “I don’t want to sell a stake in my company or get an investor, because then I will have no freedom over my creativity,” he argues.
But that does not mean he will not look to produce bigger-budget movies – after all, even Delhi Belly cost him Rs 25 crore, and Lagaan was an expensive film 10 years ago. “I do not choose the film because it is financially feasible to make it. I choose a film if I am excited about its script, and then I will look at its feasibility, so that no one looses money. So I could make a movie which costs Rs 100 crore also,” says Khan, explaining his economic philosophy on film-making.
Khan also keeps a tight control on the marketing of the film, and even in a co-production, he is the undisputable head of this department. The logic is again simple: “Marketing is just an extension of storytelling and the marketing ideas come from the material of the story itself.”
His mantra for marketing is also simple: be honest about what the movie is about, so the audiences know what they are getting. So Peepli Live was sold as a social-political satire. He says conventional wisdom would have been to sell it as something else, as such a marketing positioning may not have attracted audiences. But it did, and the film, made with a budget of only Rs 10 crore, made five times as much.
Similarly, Khan made no bones about the fact that Dhobi Ghat, directed by his wife Kiran Rao, was marketed as an art house film. “Today everyone would have sold it as a mainstream movie, as people are defensive about using the word art films. But we thought the audiences must know clearly what they were there for,” says Aamir. Dhobi Ghat might not have been a raging success like Peepli Live but, made with a budget of Rs 11 crore, it still made money – a box office collection of Rs 14 crore, the sort that most Indian producers would have been envious about.
Is Aamir looking beyond Hindi films? Yes, he says, he is now also going to focus on regional films, which will be his next area of concentration. But no, he will not look at producing television content, at least for the time being. And yes, he is willing to collaborate with Hollywood studios that have made their presence felt in the country, and go in for collaborative agreements with them. And while he is not looking for a movie that can have universal appeal across the globe, if someone comes to him with a script, he is willing to take a look.
And of course, there is one thing that he promises to his audiences: “I will make movies which engage audiences.” And that, he emphasises, is different from just entertaining audiences. That, for Aamir Khan, is the core of his business.
