The studio model belongs as much to Indian cinema’s past as it does to Hollywood, where both the majors and the independents run their show on strictly professional, corporate lines. “Every Hollywood film made these days is tested for market response from all conceivable angles,” says management guru and film producer Arindam Chaudhuri. “It is not surprising, therefore, that at least 80 per cent of films produced in the US make money.” That filmmaking culture, he adds, is slowly seeping into India.

Chaudhuri feels that Hindi cinema is witnessing the sort of change that swept through the advertising industry a decade ago: “There was a time when people appended a woman’s body to an ad and called it creativity. Gradually creativity became better directed and got linked to result.”

Similarly, filmmakers, Chaudhuri suggests, are directing themselves towards audience satisfaction, fine-tuning their products to meet market requirements. Gone are the days when a director could complete a film and feel that his job was done. Says Chaudhuri, who has two unconventional films, Rituparno Ghosh’s Sunglass and Rajat Kapoor’s Mithya, ready for release: “If a quality product is marketed well, there is no reason why it won’t click commercially.”

Chaudhuri is producing Ghosh’s first English-language film, starring Amitabh Bachchan as a Shakespearean actor and Preity Zinta. While the new film, based on a Bengali play by Utpal Dutt, will be designed for international distribution, the producer is confident that it will work in the domestic circuit too because of the curiosity quotient – this will be Bachchan’s first English film. “I want to take Rituparno to the all-India masses,” he says. The Bengali market accepts his films. The Hindi audience hasn’t developed a taste for his cinema. But they will if we try hard enough.”

... contd.