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Monday October 19, 2009

Bollywood cashing in on Deepavali celebrations

INDIA DIARY By COOMI KAPOOR


IT’S Deepavali period and Bollywood seeks to cash in on the festive spirit pervading throughout the land. The festival of lights and good cheer normally spells big bucks for filmmakers. This year is no different, with three big budget films opening in the Deepavali week. Over the years, Bollywood has always timed its most ambitious projects for a Deepavali opening. Being the cheapest and most easily accessible source of entertainment for a vast majority of Indians, some of the biggest box-office hits in the history of the Hindi film industry have had Deepavali releases.

Last Deepavali for instance, Ajay Devgan hit pay dirt with his home production Golmaal Returns. Fashion was the other release which won its lead star Priyanka Chopra the best actress award. This Deepavali, Devgan is featured as the lead star in All The Best, along with Sanjay Dutt, Bipasha Basu and Fardeen Khan. Devgan is competing against two other superstars, Akshay Kumar and Salman Khan.

It is early days yet as to who will end up grossing most on the turnstiles. Initial opening of Akki’s Blue, an underwater thriller shot mostly in Bahamas, also featuring Katrina Kaif and Sanjay Dutt, had to be encouraging since advance bookings for the weekend had closed much ahead of the scheduled release.

Also, Salman Khan’s home production Mr and Mrs Khanna, also starring his brother Sohail Khan and Katrina Kapur, was set to open to full houses.

The de rigueur advance publicity on various television channels prior to the Deepavali release had aroused great curiosity value. Respective lead pairs were seen talking gushingly about their coming offering. The interviews with the stars were inevitably interspersed with song and dance sequences from the movies. However, these did not come gratis even if unwary television viewers believed them to be so. Crores of rupees were spent on the promotion of these films in print and television media.

In the normal course, film producers go to great lengths not to release big budget films in the same week to avoid comparison and competition. However, such is their faith in the pulling power of the festival of lights that all three big budget movies opened simultaneously, defying the Bollywood practice of staggering the exhibition of such films over a period of time.

Having incurred huge losses due to the over two month-long strike earlier in the year, Bollywood was clearly keen to make up for the lost time by offering three A-Grade films this Deepavali season.

A look at the earlier Deepavali hits would fully bear out Bollywood’s faith in the festive season setting the cash registers ringing at the turnstiles.

One of the all-time box office hits, the Shah Rukh Khan-Kajol starrer, Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, was released in the Deepavali week back in 1995. The Yash Raj Film’s ode to love celebrated a golden jubilee and set up Shah Rukh Khan on the way to superstardom.

Yash Chopra followed up on that success two years later when on Deepavali he released another stupendous hit, the Shah Rukh Khan-Madhuri Dixit-Karisma Kapoor starrer, Dil To Pagal Hai.

The trend to use Deepavali as the magnet for audiences began way back in the ‘50s when the late Bharat Bhushan starrer’s Baiju Bawra went on to become a silver jubilee hit. To this day, its soul-stirring Mohammed Rafi numbers can be heard on popular radio stations.

Another memorable film, Mother India, which features pretty high in any serious history of Bollywood, was a Deepavali release back in 1957. Its success made stars out of the late brothers-in law, Rajinder Kumar and Sunil Dutt.

Indeed, Shah Rukh Khan’s last big hit, Om Shanti Om, too, was the 2007 Deepavali release. It created a star out of Deepika Padukone. Shah Rukh Khan’s other big hits were released on Deepavali. If in 2000 the Aditya Chopra produced Mohabbtein bowled over film audiences, four years later it was Yash Chopra’s Veer Zara, which took the box-office by storm.

Deepavali had been so lucky for Shah Rukh Khan and his young producer-director friend Karan Johar that back in 1998, the two took the full measure of the top-billed star Amitabh Bachchan. Bade Miyan, Chottey Miyan, with Govinda playing Chootey Miyan to Bachchan’s Badey Miyan was meant to tickle the funny bone of front stalls, which invariably decided the fate of any commercial film. But it failed before Shah Rukh Khan’s first film with Johar, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. Meanwhile, Deepavali having come rather early this year, it nearly coincided with the 67th birthday of Bachchan. He marked his 40th year in Bollywood this week.

The lanky star who began life as a junior executive in Kolkata in a shipping freight company today commands a pay cheque in millions.

In fact, his actor son Abhishek does not get even half the fees for doing a film which the Senior Bachchan still gets after 40 years. All his other Bollywood contemporaries, from Dharmendra and Rajesh Khanna to Jeetendra and Randhir Kapoor, have faded away while Big B is still going strong.

Such is his pulling power that he still towers over younger stars such as Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan. Only a few weeks ago, Amitabh signed three big banner films and also announced his return to the small screen after a gap of five years.

In the next segment of the reality show, Bigg Boss, being telecast by a newly-launched Hindi entertainment channel, Colors, Bachchan plays an amateur psychoanalyst to odd ball characters from diverse economic and social backgrounds thrown together in a house with some 35 cameras tracking their every move 24/7.

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