Trade Tattle

A VENUS UPDATE
Ganesh Jain of Venus made it clear that the assumption that Mela and Baadshah did not bring in big money is wrong. “Baadshah has brought an overflow from Nizam, Mysore and Mumbai. It has earned a commission from all other territories including the overseas market. As for Mela, we got an overflow from all territories, which itself proves that the film was a hit,” he says.

Regarding the line-up of Venus films, he said there are 15 in the pipeline, all featuring the big stars. Four films are already under production. They include Josh starring Shah Rukh Khan, Aishwarya Rai, Chandrachur Singh, Priya Gill and Sharad Kapoor, Dhadkan, starring Akshay Kumar, Sunil Shetty, Shilpa Shetty, Parmeet Sethi and Navnet Nishan, Kahi Pyar Na Ho Jaye starring Salman Khan, Rani Mukerji, Jackie Shroff and Pooja Batra and Ajnabi, with Akshay Kumar.

Venus has had an export house since 1983. It not only exports music cassettes but also CDs and films. Ganesh Jain says there was a 25 per cent increase in export earnings, last year.

SHROFF’S PRIZED ACQUISITION
BALKRISHNA Shroff is one distributor who knows how to publicise the films he acquires for Mumbai territory. Now he is giving expensive diaries as mementoes, containing stills of Vasu Bhagnani’s Tera Jadoo Chal Gaya, to all exhibitors and distributor friends. This is one way of popularising the film and make it known in the distribution circle in Naaz Building that he has acquired Vashu Bhagnani’s Tera Jadoo Chal Gaya. Since he is known for adopting novel methods of publicising films, one has to wait what kind of publicity methods he is going to adopt for the film due for an early release. Last week, he released Dil Hi Dil Mein.

SMALL’S BIG ENOUGH
People in film business normally calculate the quantum of business done only by the big films at the box-office. But everybody seems to ignore the fact that small-budget films like Munnibai has done a business of Rs 80 lakh in Delhi-UP territory. Considering its price - it was sold for hardly Rs 2 lakh, Munnibai should be among the top ten films which have done extraordinary business.

NOW, SOME STATISTICS
IF one goes by statistic, the picture of THE film industry is dismal as out of 212 completed films, 128 films are still open for sale for all territories. This means more than Rs 1000 crore investment has been blocked till those films are released. For that matter, 84 under production films out of 185 are also open for all territories for sale.

Tolu Bajaj says these statistics are meaningless. Even if 185 films are on the floor, what matters is how many of them are worth considering. “Hardly 70 films may be worth considering for sale but the rest of them have no face value. Similarly, if 128 films are not sold, it means that the majority of them may be small-budget films. How do you expect these films to be sold at all? At any given time, hardly 50 to 60 films are marketable and the rest are inconsequential,” he pointed out.

STAR FILMS DECLINE
TWICE Santosh Singh Jain, president of the Central Circuit Cine Association tried to bring a ceiling on the assignment of film stars because every star had not less than 20 films on hand in 70s and 80s. Today that question doesn’t arise because none of the stars have more than 10 films on the floor. Sunil Shetty is the only star who has ten films, followed by nine by Ajay Devgan. Govinda and Akshay Kumar have seven films on floor each while Sanjay Dutt and Sunny Deol have six films each. Jackie Shroff and Bobby Deol have five films each on the floor. In contrast, Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan have only three films each on the floor. Aamir Khan is the lone star who has only one film Lagaan, his own film production.

MSM Desai