There was a time when every Bollywood movie started with this studio’s logo. Well, most movies if not all. It was legendary. As the years went by, more movie studios were opened and competition became harder.
Since then, a lot of these studios have shut down or declared bankruptcy. Most likely due to the high prices of Bollywood stars, which the studios happily paid but realized it was too much when some of these films flopped big time!
This particular studio has been struggling to pay its debts off. Its studio head was once a billionaire! Now he is in the paper talking about how he managed to pay off his debts of two months this year.
This was the same man, who 10 years ago spoke about how he wanted his company to be as big as a Hollywood movie studio. We don’t know whether he did manage to get that far, but the debts he accumulated sure makes it look like it was as big as Hollywood.
So many millionaires and billionaires are losing it all in India. Times have indeed change! There was a time when the bad economy only hit commoners, but this time it seems to be hitting only super rich people!
Check out the blind item below from Mumbai Mirror.
Bollywood Blind Item
THE founder of this old movie studio is a worried man. Things haven’t been good for the tycoon’s business which has been seeing a slowdown in recent months, more so coupled with legal problems.
Now we hear, the said tycoon is desperately seeking funds to repay loans and has been approaching all and sundry for help. A debt trap is what he may get into, which is taking a loan to repay another loan, which he would have seen in the case of an aviation baron recently.
OSOP Guesses
Founder: Kishore Lulla
Old Movie Studio: Eros
On a related note, I can’t think of even one movie Salman has produced with new actors that has turned into a verifiable hit. There was the one with Sooraj/Athiya, his BIL, Pranutan Behl, Kat’s sister etc. All Flops. I believe 3 out of the 4 movies he produced that starred himself also flopped. Any other production house would have turned belly up with 7+ flops in a line, but the blind faith in his stardom ensured he made profits for Race3, Tubelight and Bharat. This is the guy who famously called himself ‘the captain of the ship’ when questioned about his humongous salary/profit share. Well, the ship’s sinking captain….
SRK’s Badla though has been a surprise sleeper hit. So he may comeback as a producer to reckon with, but we need to wait and watch. I did find this tweet of his interesting in this context though (referring to Adi and Karan)…”Dreamers r good. But if those dreams r not given a direction they mean nothing.These 2 fulfilled every dream I had,over & above every dream they had for themselves.Adi & Karan. Y share this with all? Cos u should know, more important than ur dreams r those who fulfil them for u”
Now that he has turned producer for other actors, he seems to understand the importance of producers/directors (those who fulfill them for you).
Interesting times ahead for Bollywood business.
Movie production costs very less as compared to paying huge amount of money to stars.The result is that budget increases drastically. Stars also take away lot of money as profit from the movie. Even if product endorsements through movie/music rights/ satellite rights are done to recover costs, studios still suffer. Producers pay money for shopping of stars and their family members of stars at shooting locations abroad. They also pay huge amount of money to the staff of stars in the name of so called professional fees. Walking out of from shooting, interruption at work due to ego issues, reshooting, making unreasonable demands, insisting on designer clothes adds to cost.Stars rarely spend money from their pockets; except for houses and cars. It is high time that stars stop getting overpaid.This leaves producers with almost no money and the studio suffers. Producers forget that stars can give opening/certain amount of visibility to the movie and not success of the movie.Greed is given more importance than rationality.
This serves as a very strong motivation for most of the bollywood kids to become stars because they get used to such luxurious lifestyle & outsiders also start getting drawn towards movies. Love for acting becomes a very rare reason to get into movies. But now even stars have started
their own production houses, so when their movies fail they know how their producers must have felt when money is wasted.
Movie stars charge such crazy amount of money.no wonder producers are going Bank corrupt.and then suddenly you have movie stars producing movies. With so much money coming in they don’t know what to do with it. So splash it on nepotism, family, friends to make movies with.
Uh oh. Here’s wishing they emerge from this stronger than ever.
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