And The Box Office Verdict is ………..@$# Yeah Right!
Hi Folks,
I am as pasisonate about films, as I am about my day job of a CPA (Certified Public Accountant) and I also happen to be a Chartered Accountant from India. This is not about a job search, this is to put the number crunching background in front of all you folks. Having said that it totally drives me up the wall, to see what i see, on the box office reporting status in India. A company/an individual that reports numbers, also does reviews, also does the PR for films…..how strange is that? In this era of Enron and World Comm and Arthur Anderson, where is the issue of independence, when the person who audits your numbers (the box office one’s), also does your PR job. Well don’t take my word for it, research the films that the PR “wing” of the “number cruncher” takes on. Chances are that even if it was a total dud, it will never be declared as such, it will be called, Average, or some lame term, whatever that means.
I’m sure each of you folks has seen the Oscars. Who opens the Oscar envelope? An accountant of course, now what would happen if that accountant could also decide the verdict on who the winners would be and could also decide which of the nominees would be his/their clients? Picture the irony.
And then let’s for a moment digress and talk about WHAT IS A HIT? & WHAT IS A FLOP? Seems to me that the trade gurus of Mumbai have got it all wrong. Pure collection numbers decide the status of a film…so if film X collected Rs 10 crores, and film Y collected Rs 50 lacs, the trade gurus boldly declare X to be a mega hit and Y to be a super flop.
Now when was the last time the Profit and Loss stopped at the Gross Revenue number?
What happended to Costs? Hence a film which collected 10 crores, could have been made for 11crores and the one which collected 50 lacs ,might have cost 48 lacs to make. Now you tell me which is likely to return money to it’s investors and which one is a true hit.
The subject of Accountancy has been taught in India for a while, seems a different version was taught to the Trade gurus.
And on the subject if investors. So it is the most noble art form (as I see in my limited interaction in this line), to go and tell your investors that all their money is lost. Hey, it makes a glorious story. Now what if you were to actually, over and above your calling as a film maker, have some sort of basic business decency…? How about at least attempting to get the investors their money back, seems to me that, that is meant for the lowlife’s. The ”above it all” function like the excsses of the dot com era who made statements like “profits is for whimps,” if so I lUV WHIMPS!!!
Going back to the number crunchers. Does anyone audit the proceeds that the multiplex or theater reports? Probably not. I think a bigger issue than piracy, currently, is the absence, in Mumbai, of the concept of Independent collectors/checkers.
Your thoughts.
Sincerely,
Vivek”if they want industry status then they need to show a higher level of accountability” Kumar
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
patly agree with you…i think that the new breed is more savvy in these matters –
Mangal Pandey actually collected 50crores (its cost of production+prints+marketing) but was dubbed a flop. So was Main prem ki deewani hoon – it collected a substantial amount but probably covered only the cost of production and not of prints, marketing etc – hence it was a flop.
Jism – made on a modest budget – 1-2crores made about (close to ) 10 crors – hence a hit!
I think that the industry has become more cost concious and is using professionals ( even CPAs :d ) to ensure proper production budgeting.
It was in the 70s and 80s that a film was a hit depending upon the number of days it was in the theatre – times have changed drastically!
Most boxoffice analysts use distrubution price vs collections to determine if it is hit or flop.
For example, you make a film for 20 cr, and sell someone the rights to distrubute in India for 15 cr. Now hit and flop in India will be determined by whether that 15 cr can be recovered by the distrubuter. Thats why a majority of films actually “flop”, because there will always be distubuters that overpay for a film.
The actual producers 90% of the time make money, because whhen its all said and done and the distrubution rights for India and Overseas, DVD rights, TV rights, Audio rights, etc. are all taken account for they ussually make money.