Secrets of Yash Raj Films Box Office Hits

How do most Yash Raj Films movies manage to succeed at the box office? Is it because they are great scripts? Or is it because Yash Raj Films spend a fortune on marketing their movies?

They sure know how to smartly package a movie. The result? An otherwise average movie opens to great weekend collections all over the world thanks to the initial hype created by the excellent promotions. In fact around 40 to 50% of the total budget of the movie is actually spent on promoting the movie.

This is a very good tactic because it ensures that the producer (or Distributors as the case may be) recovers his or her investment by the time the talk spreads about how good or bad the movie is.

These movies depend solely on the first weekend collections. In nine of ten cases, the opening weekend tickets are sold out well in advance. This is because by the time the movie hits the marquee every Tom Dick and Harry in any corner of the country know even the minutest details about the movie.

Switch on the TV and you see an interview with the lead actor in one channel, a Page 3 report on something related to the movie in the next channel and a staple diet of the movie’s songs in the third. Enough about the idiot box. Grab your newspaper – You see reports after reports on how this movie is made.

Interestingly, there is this “Est” factor. People talk about their movie and use words ending with “Est” liberally. (Best movie, Scariest time of my life, Funniest experiences…) This superlative “performance” of the media partners works big time for the movie.

Recently while watching a Hindi movie, I was amazed to see the number of media partners the movie had. The titles flashed at least twenty partners!

Compare this with the Telugu movie industry. Most of the movies in Telugu suffer from inefficient publicity. The professional approach Hindi movies adopt is missing in Telugu. While some movies are bogged down by over publicity, others have practically zero publicity.

When I mentioned this to a friend, he opined that perhaps the Telugu movie makers were scared of creating a hype – which might work against the movie.

What differentiates Hype from Publicity? You can’t hype a movie but you can publicize it. Smart packaging of the movie’s prerelease media exposure is called “Publicity” while elevating the movie to the zenith purely based on the actors/technicians involved amounts to creating Hype.

The differentiation aforesaid is off my hat. I am sure the line dividing these two is very thin and quite fuzzy. Clear definition of Hype and Publicity maybe not possible. However we can very well tilt the equation heavily towards smart publicity – by taking a leaf or two from the marketing cookbooks used in Bollywood… especially by Yash Raj Films.

Source: India FM

Reward for Shabana Azmi

Shabana Azmi will receive the second ANR award. This was announced by Akkineni Nageshwar Rao’s son Venkat recently..

The first award was given away to Dev Anand for the year 2005. ANR has established the Akkineni International Foundation in 1991 and pooled in resources and ever since he has been awarding some amount for outstanding actors for their contribution to humanity and art and entertainment. The award will be given away on Jan 13. ANR has lauded her as an excellent human being.


Source: Andhra Cafe

Bollywood film 'Kabul Express' banned in Afghanistan

Afghanistan, where Bollywood films enjoy immense popularity, has banned the screening of Indian director Kabir Khan's "Kabul Express" because the Hazara ethnic minority community found parts of the film offending.

"The film has some sentences which were very offensive towards one of Afghanistan's ethnicities, namely the Hazara. For this reason it has been banned," Najib Manalai, Afghanistan's minister of culture adviser, said.

Hazaras, a Shia Muslim minority, make up about 10 percent of the Afghan population. They have supposedly descended from remnants of Genghis Khan's invading army.

The film starring Bollywood stars Arshad Warsi and John Abraham is a socio-political comment on the war ravaged country and it portrays Hazaras as a ruthless and heartless community.

There is a sequence that shows the travelling team of journalists and filmmakers stopped on a highway. The team is told by a Pakistan Army officer masquerading as a Taliban that they could be waylaid and robbed by the local community of Hazaras.

The film, based on Khan's personal experience in the country while filming a documentary film, hit the screens last December and received critical acclaim.

While filming it Khan and both the actors received life threats from the Afghan rebels. However, Khan shot the film on location under heavy security. He wrapped it up in 45 days.

A large number of cinemas in Afghanistan show Hindi films because of the cultural affinity and the language is easily understood.

Amitabh Bachchan starrer "Khuda Gawah" was based, although not shot, in Afghanistan during the 1980s and was said to be popular with both the supporters of the Najibullah regime in Kabul and its opponents, the mujahideen.

Actor-film maker Firoze Khan has also portrayed Afghan culture and characters in his films, including the Buskhashi sport in "Dharmatma".


Source: glamsham