This story is from November 30, 2007

Hype doesn’t make it hot

TEJASWINI TIRTA / TNN / Nov 30, 2007, 00:00 IST

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This has been a year of over-hyped Bollywood flicks that didn’t grab the audience. In-your-face marketing can’t guarantee BO hits.

doweshowbellyad=0; Konkona Sen Sharma and Rani Mukerji in Laaga Chunari Mein Daag. More picsGrand promos, exclusive interviews on every channel, interactive contests, guest appearances on reality shows, rumours surrounding the film’s release —Bollywood filmmakers have gone all out to market their projects this year.
Unfortunately, films that came with the loudest bang fell the hardest at the box office — with the exception of Om Shanti Om, that is.
Films that came in quietly, in contrast, turned out to be paisa vasool for both the makers and the audience and even gathered some critical acclaim. “There’s no set formula for success in showbiz. The audience, however, has become choosy. A big-budget, weak-story film will not go a long way,” says film critic Reema Moudgil. Saawariya is one of the most recent examples of a super-marketed film that flopped.
Brand Sanjay Leela Bhansali, trailors of a fairytale romance, songs and dances amidst dreamy locales and the grand launch of Ranbir Kapoor and Sonam Kapoor — all of it raised audience expectations so much that they felt cheated when they couldn’t connect emotionally to the story,” says Reema.

And Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal, notwithstanding the racial abuse snippet, John-Bips chemistry and John travelling across the world throwing autographed footballs at the audience, has failed to score. Other highly-talked about films that bombed this year are Salaam-e-Ishq, starring big names like Salman Khan, Priyanka Chopra and a host of others; Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s Eklavya, although it is India’s official Oscar entry; Ram Gopal Varma ki Aag, which saw empty theatres even before the opening weekend was over; Pradeep Sarkar’s

Laaga Chunari Mein Daag; not to forget Anurag Kashyap’s No Smoking.
“Filmmakers should learn to balance between packaging and content. For films like Johnny Gaddaar, Dharm, and Black Friday, a good marketing strategy could have probably attracted more people. They were good scripts but not many people felt the need to see them,” says Reema.
Filmmaker Anurag Basu agrees that today publicity and marketing do play an important role in the success of a film, provided they are true to the script. “Which is why, despite my producers’ and distributors’ insistence on using Shilpa Shetty and Shiney Ahuja at the forefront of Metro’s promotions, I made sure each story got equal promo space and the audience had a clear picture of what the movie was about,” says Anurag. The movie was declared a hit.
And you may say that being an SRK-starrer, Chak De! India would have got its viewers with or without publicity, but the biggest hit of 2007 arrived as silently as coach Kabir Khan’s struggle. “The film actually had bad openings,” recalls actor Arya Menon. “When the first music video we released didn’t do too well, all our marketing plans were put on hold. The movie’s biggest promoters were the people who spread the word. We got invitations to judge talent shows and give interviews only much later,” she says.
Other pleasant surprises were the Akshay-Katrina starrer Namastey London, Apoorva Lakhia’s Shootout at Lokhandwala, Jab We Met by Imtiaz Ali, Cheeni Kum with Chef Big B and Tabu, and a host of small-budget films like Bheja Fry, Dhamaal, Honeymoon Travels and Partner. It will be interesting to see how the quiet music launch of Aamir Khan’s directorial debut, Taare Zameen Par, which was at Shammi Kapoor’s residence, fared against wild fare like Welcome.

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