About 10 to 15 years back, there was a shift in the economic structure of Bollywood. Till then the industry had been led by a group of people interested in filmmaking and so, enthused by the creativity and glamour of the field, got into it despite the fact that most movies flopped.
Or they were born into it and picked up the trade from their fathers or other kin who had established themselves there. But then in the decade after the new millennium, the world economy went into overdrive and corporations, flush with cash, started funding films.
Massive amounts of money began to be funnelled in by them as they signed on stars in multi-movie contracts. Then, of course, the recession of 2008 happened and with many of the movies not raking in profits, there was a steady return of the reins of Bollywood to the old hands.
Yashraj Films, a family concern, is still the biggest producer and the other big producers are the stars themselves. But there is some interesting news coming up once again, on the obscene amounts of money that some Bollywood superstars are getting.
This time, the entertainment channels are behind it. First there was news that Hrithik Roshan was going to be paid Rs550 crore for the rights to six movies of his being given to a channel. That was an unheard of amount of money in one lot for anyone in Bollywood.
Likewise, at slightly lesser level, Ajay Devgn was said to be getting Rs400 crore for a similar deal, with Varun Dhawan getting Rs300 crore.
And now for an update, which has sent shockwaves across the industry. Salman Khan will reportedly be paid Rs1,000 crore to turn over the rights to his 10 next movies to a satellite channel. He will also make appearances for them. This is the kind of money that medium sized corporations are valued at, and apparently Salman is now worth the money. And sooner or later we will receive news about Shah Rukh Khan and Aamir Khan making similar agreements. The big question is, of course, how these channels hope to recover the money.
Newsmaker again
Over the last two years Anupam Kher has been relentlessly in the news because of a new public avatar that he had donned on social networking. He has over six million followers on Twitter and many of them hang on to every word of his.
Recently, however, Kher had seemed to have dropped off the radar with nothing very angry or shocking emerging from him. But that changed last week when he put up very graphic images of Kashmiri Pandits who had been reportedly killed while being driven away to safety.
The context was the recent burst of unrest in Kashmir. Once again there was a litany of voices for and against Kher, which must have pleased him because he clearly sees himself as a politico-activist of sorts.
He also made news for a different reason — a rather surprising change in his physical appearance because of which he looks very lean and muscled. He has been working out in the gym a lot and attributes the change to inspiration from Akshay Kumar.
Not friends
The drama around an inadvertent comment that Salman Khan made comparing his state after a shooting schedule to a raped woman shows no sign of dying down. He has steadfastly refused to apologise even when replying to notices by private and government women’s rights organisations.
Meanwhile, different Bollywood personalities have often been asked their opinion on the issue and while many have said that it was an insensitive thing to do, no one has really dared to suggest what Salman’s course of action should be.
The latest person to get caught in this issue is Salman’s co-star in Sultan, Anushka Sharma. Sultan has done extraordinarily well and is inching its way to become the most successful movie of all time and naturally everyone connected with it is all-smiles.
So it was interesting that Anushka was quite candid when talking about Salman in an interview. She agreed that his statement had been insensitive and that everyone, especially celebrities, have a responsibility to be careful about what they say.
However, she too refused to get into what Salman should do. In fact, she said that she had little influence over Salman because in the sets they were not really very close.
She added that Salman is someone who has a set way of doing things and he doesn’t go out of his way to make anyone else comfortable.
In effect, she was saying that Salman is as good as a stranger to her despite them being in one of the biggest movies of all time.
Not funny
Films in the Masti franchise are the kind of silly movies that go on to become hits, despite having actors without much following. Actors like Vivek Oberoi, Riteish Deshmukh and Aftab Shivdasani.
Grand Masti, the follow-up, was successful and now the third in the series, Great Grand Masti, has been released. The movie uses a combination of crass and sexist jokes combined with sleaze to cater to the audience.
This time, however, just before the release the movie’s makers found themselves with a legal notice sent by Shiney Ahuja, who used to be a promising actor before getting embroiled in a rape case involving his maid, which is still in courts.
Apparently, Great Grand Masti has a maid character named Shiney and the filmmakers have used the case details for some of the funny dialogues.
But Shiney is not seeing the humour in it. He is out on bail currently and is also trying to get back into Bollywood with bit roles. That his own industry is now mocking him might be too much to swallow. But such are the vagaries of life. If not for that alleged incident, his life would have taken a different turn and Shiney might have been a star in a big budget film.
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BIG MONEY: Salman Khan is said to have given the rights to his next 10 films to a satellite channel for Rs1,000 crore.
