Film production as a business is rife with risk, but is there a way to reduce them? Director-producer Karan Johar broke down the economics of mounting a film, and opened up about the work that goes into collating data on excel sheets before the script comes alive on the big (and sometimes small) screen.
In an interview with The Week, Johar, who runs Dharma Productions, listed how the financial success of a film is entirely dependent on the budget it’s being mounted on. The director of some of the biggest blockbusters of the last 20 years, Johar said that the recovery model is basically divided in four vehicles
“There is recovery from satellite, which is at an all time low right now because digital is the big thing. Then there is digital recovery, which is a large part of your pie. Then there’s a music component, if you have brand value for music and your film is musical enough. Fourth is your estimated box office potential, worldwide. The lowest possible number as per the genre. You put a number to all this… That’s the best model, which sometimes doesn’t work when you go way beyond your budget. Ideally, your budget should equal these four components.”
Before the film is released and manages to clock in numbers, it’s usually arrived in cinemas with a marketing fanfare, which now includes memes, Instagram reels and even GIFs. None of this matters, Johar says, if the film isn’t good. “Nothing can salvage a bad film and nothing can stop a good film. This (marketing) is all vanilla icing, but if your cake isn’t solid then nothing matters
How is a film success on OTT?
Karan Johar explained that each platform has its own kind of audience, but their highest numbers come from ‘licensed films’, that “released in theaters, created havoc, and then come to their service and did hugely well.” The filmmaker said that streaming platforms have realised that the “real big business” is in showcasing theatrical films rather than originals.
It’s a burning question, as most new films on any streaming platform lands at number 1 position immediately after their debut. But there’s a catch, Johar explained, as an important metric that remains secret is the “drop-off rate.”
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