Why do you want to produce a movie when you know very well that you are going to lose nearly all that you had invested?
We expected Loot-2 to be the biggest Nepali movie ever but I guess Haku Kaley and his friends were not as funny as the Chakka Panja folks. Well, it’s definitely hard to make a sequel and although Nischal Basnet did try and made tons of money at the Nepali box office, the movie failed to meet the expectations of his fans. Let’s hope Loot-3 will be the baddest and Haku Kaley can finally rule this country with his schemes.
Making a movie is not easy. You have to have a good story, a great cast, and a hardworking crew. Producers sell their houses, take loans or use the money they made off some land deals to make their movies. All producers want their movies to break the box office record but the reality is that 90% of the movies produced each year fail to even recover their costs. And we cannot blame the filmmakers alone. Well, the story might have been crap and the item numbers didn’t turn out as planned but, at the end of the day, our theater owners also play a part in it all.
Many producers in our Nepali movie industry complain that only distributors and theater owners make profit while they receive peanuts even if their movies did perform reasonably well at the theaters. A friend of mine produced a movie last year. He invested more than 80 hundred thousand rupees. After collecting money from the theaters and international rights, he had barely made half of what he had invested.
Badge of honor
Why do you want to produce a movie when you know very well that you are going to lose nearly all that you had invested? Is it the glamour or one’s passion to make a movie and see his or her name on the screen as a producer? We don’t know but when one hears about Chakka Panja making more than 160 million then all wannabe producers dream of investing ten million and making ten times more.
But what many folks seem to forget is that you don’t rake in all the money made at the box office. The theater owners take more than 50% of the gross and the distributors take more than 20% and you are left with the rest. Let’s suppose your movie grossed 20 million at the box office. You only get roughly 12 million back. We don’t know how much money the Chakka Panja team got from the theater owners but even if we were to use the 30% formula, they sure did make around 100 million. And, then of course, you have to pay taxes to the government as well.
We all know that comedy sells well in our country and we are mostly tired of the action folks of yesteryears when Rajesh Hamal could take on a dozen of goons with his bare hands. Nepali moviegoers are now focusing on content rather than only the usual masala mix offered by most of our filmmakers.
And now, Bahubali-2 is creating waves in India and everyone is talking about the movie in Nepal as well. The movie made by South Indian filmmakers has also surprised the Bollywood folks. The two-part movie was a risky affair for everyone involved. One had to devote nearly five years to make this movie. The producers must have slept barely a few hours a day during the five years. But it all turned out well for everyone involved. It is the first Indian movie to gross 10 billion worldwide and is expected to mint some more money once it is screened in China, Japan, and other countries as well.
So when will we have our Bahubali? One cannot make a movie about Prithivi Narayan Shah and think of making tons of money. It would be an expensive movie because you have to work on hiring an expert costume designer, a dozen historians and even go back to the history books to get everything right. Well, Babhubali was expensive as well.
Even the language spoken would be vastly different than the usual Nepali we speak today. And in this age of Republic, not many of us want to see him and his clans from Gorkha invade the Kathmandu Valley and kill thousands of its residents in their quest to unify this country. Maybe, we can make a movie about the later years when our Gorkhali forces ventured till the gates of Delhi and the Old Nepal then was nearly twice the size of the New Nepal. Our filmmakers have tried some of the ‘Rana’ stories and the great ‘warrior’ stories of our soldiers who have shown their bravery in foreign lands.
This same friend who lost quite a bit of money in his first movie venture is planning to make another movie again. He calls me up for advice not because I’m an expert on all matters related to filmmaking but I’m the only one who has nothing positive to say about the business side of the film industry in our country. I tell my friend that if you really want to make money in this country, then you should not invest more than 50 hundred thousand rupees and that too should cover your marketing and promotions costs as well.
He tells me that most of today’s so-called top actors charge at least 8 to 10 hundred thousand rupees per movie and the director, cinematographer and editor ask for at least 3 to 5 hundred thousand rupees. If we do the math, that’s already the whole budget that I recommend right there. Then what about the production cost, paying the other casts and crew? I tell him that if he really wants to make a movie that makes money and, at the same time, he can be proud of and show it to his family and his children in the future then he should make a movie about the youth in this country. Make a movie that is positive and inspires our young folks to work hard and be proud of this country despite all the problems that exist here.
You do not have to follow the ‘Loot’ or the ‘Chakka Panja’ formula. You don’t need all the so-called ‘hot’ actors of the day to carry your movie. At the end of the day, what you need is a good story that will make us feel that it is our own story as well.
The writer is a house husband who believes in changing, if not the world, the community he lives in one person at a time. Reach him at kalumaila99@gmail.com
