Is Bollywood Taking Too Much Risk When It Comes To Exorbitant Budget?

As hardcore and loyal Bollywood lovers nothing makes us happier when Bollywood broadens its horizon. From  fresh and bold content to world class filmmaking to cutting edge technology, Bollywood has proved it again and again that when it comes to making movies, we are second to none.

With films like Baahubali that re-defined visual grandeur to films like Dangal that re-defined box-office success, Bollywood is going places that it has not been to before, but are we getting a little too carried and making decisions that are not practical?

Recently, it was reported the budget of Rajnikanth and Akshay Kumar starrer 2.0 has already touched a whopping 550 crores. To put things in perpective, the film has not completed filming yet which means that there is a possibility of more money being further pumped into the project and that is just in terms of filming. Apart from filming a hefty amount will surely also be pumped for the promotion and publicity of the film which might just take the total budget of the film approximately close a dizzying figure of 700 crores.

This is not only the case with 2.0. For a while now the talks of making a magnum opus on the great epic Mahabharatha has been making the rounds. There is a possibility that the film might have a mind numbing budget of 1000 crores. Which,just going by the basic understanding of business, means that the film will have to have a box-office collection of 1000 crores just to break even.

Now the question arises are we really equipped to incur 700 to 1000 crores out of one box-office release? The practical answer to this question is that if not impossible it is a herculean task given certain factors.

Firstly, there have been ample examples of movies such as Ra. One, Bang Bang, Tubelight or Raees which failed to become profitable ventures despite raking in more than 100 crores at the box-office. The reason behind this anomaly was simply high production cost especially on things which would do not too much value to the content or the experience of the film but adds a lot many zeroes to the budget. With examples such as these, it is indeed quite risky to go so generous with the budget.

Not just that, in our country we have close to 9000 screens which is actually hardly adequate for the amount of films Bollywood churns out in a year. Additionally, with strong regional industries, there are also films for those industries vying for the same 9000 screens and in many places regional films get preference over Hindi films.

One might argue that 2.0 is being released in multiple languages, but even then there are pockets like West Bengal where the films released in Hindi and Tamil or Telugu would have to battle it out with the regional films and share screens which might bring down its share. And, for a film to incur 1000 crores at the box-office it will probably have to work equally well in every pocket of the country.

While we are happy that Bollywood is going bigger than ever and taking major risks, we just hope that these decisions are in right directions and are not just mounting aspirations but also have an element of practical implementation.