Bollywood town’s last hope

It appears that the ongoing nationwide cash crunch is hitting the film industry hard. The number of shootings that often take place at Mumbai’s Film City have practically been halved. Six months ago, Film City had a total of 64 shoots lined up in their various indoor and outdoor locations. Stunningly, this week there are only 32 shoots lined up.

“Out of those, 12 are packing up and some of them are for ongoing TV serials. This means that there are very few films being shot there. Films are shot at Film City because it is cheaper than many studios with the kind of variety it offers in terms of locations,” says movie business analyst Atul Mohan.

Other studios, like the popular Mehboob Studios in Bandra, are a lot more expensive. “You have commercials and big films being shot in that studio. It is also a lot more expensive, which is why small and medium filmmakers are used to opting for Film City. It is shocking to see the kind of drop in shootings at Film City,” Mohan further opines.

Small studios are also being affected now, as well as the satellite channels and digital platforms. A source explains, “Earlier, we used to spend a lot of money buying fresh titles for our channels. Now we have been told to only deal with the big production houses for the big films, and then look at smaller films only if the box office is promising. We may have to pay a premium, but we only want the hit films now. We, of course, have to keep up to our old deals too.” While the achche din for films seems to be over, there is some hope that the other releases this year — Panipat, Pati Pati Aur Woh, Dabangg 3 and Good Newwz — will bring in some hope.