The Bhatts don’t believe in wasting money - Mukesh Bhatt

“Make films from your heart and not your head. That’s the key. Unfortunately it is easier said than done,” began Mukesh Bhatt as we settled down for an exclusive one-on-one. The pioneers of producing blockbuster hits out of small budget movies, Bhatts proved their mettle yet again, with Aashiqui 2, last year. We caught up with the reticent producer at IMC Fusion 2014 where he was invited to spread his knowledge on creating low budget super hit movies. You are pioneer when it comes to making blockbuster hits out of small budget films. How do you manage to do that? I disagree with this term called small budget. I call it the real budget. I don’t believe in wastage. I am talking from my experience of over 40 years in film making. Even my father was in the same business. I take immense pride in saying that out of the 100 years of Indian cinema, the Bhatts have been in the business for 84 years. My father came in 1928 during the silent era. Our family saw the entire transition of Indian cinema from the silent era to the talkies, the black and white to colour, the Dolby to 3D films now. So we know what we are doing. We are experts in our field. The whole mantra of a rupee saved is a rupee earned is obsolete. That is not the yardstick to be followed today. A rupee well-spent is a rupee well-earned today. So I know where I have to spend the money rightly and where not to spend so that there is minimum wastage. Since we don’t indulge in wastage we are perceived as someone who produces low cost movies unlike my contemporaries who are indulging in a lot of wastage. What’s wastage according to you? (Thinks) As a producer, I feel wastage is when you cater to the extravaganza of pampering the actors and stars. Second is spending unrealistically on sets which are not required. There are so many nooks and corners where you can easily curtail your wastage. Anything which is not seen within the parameters of the screen and spent outside that is wastage according to me. If you are spending a billion dollars on something that is essential and can be put within the framework of the screen, it is not wastage. A lot of people don’t do that. Would you call all those lavishly made big budget movies which ended up raking 200 crore and more, a hit? A 150 crore movie that finally makes a profit of only Rs 5 crore is not a hit. Too much of money is adding too little profit. Hit is an Aashiqui 2 which I made on a budget of 10 crore and it raked in a profit of almost 100 crore. That is what I call real success. That is why I stress on making films in real budget which is easier said than done. Not many people know that. I know it because I was born in this business. I always tell my colleagues that our job is to manufacture glamour and not to be a victim of it. There is a very thin line and you have to do a lot of tight rope walking. A producer, to put it in layman’s words, is a father to the film, the director its mother and the film the baby. Sometimes the director being the mother can pamper the baby which will spoil it. And that is where the father that is the producer comes in and puts his foot down. So a film requires good fathering and good mothering, only then can it become a good film. And that’s when it becomes successful. So if the director is creative, I would say the producer is as much creative if not more because even getting the whole project and the right people together is a creative job of the highest order. Finally, spending the right kind of money is also a highly creative job. There is a lot of creativity involved in how to spend on the film rightly, how to market the film rightly and how to release the film rightly. It’s a very tricky job. Why did we see a sudden emergence of the 100-crore club in 2013? That’s media hype. Media needs to create some circus. But this number game doesn’t affect producers. See what is a 100 crore? Even 300 crore is less. India has a potential of doing much more than 300 crore. We are the most under-screened country in the world. We have 6 to 8 screens for a billion people. Now compare it with USA which has 17 screens for a million people. So where are we? We make 1500 films a year in 30 languages and we have only 12,500 screens out of which 4,500 screens are only for Hindi movies. Don’t you think that is pathetic? Look at China. It has 47,000 screens. So if you are asking me, we have still not been able to tap our true potential. Lot of our revenue gets lost to piracy which is not accounted at all. If we really want to know the real numbers, we have to get more cinema halls. That is the need of the hour. And what’s the way to remedy it? We can’t do anything in this regard. We are filmmakers. It is for the government to take a call on this. What is the government doing apart from collecting taxes? China collects 5% entertainment tax and they use that money to build more theaters. Here it doesn’t happen. There is nothing given back to the industry. The Prime Minister calls us the soft part of the nation. We are the highest taxed industry after alcohol and tobacco. And despite no support from them, we are doing well (smiles).