Four of the top 10 highest-grossing films in the history of the Indian box office released in 2023, including Jawan, which went on to become the most successful film of last year, fetching Rs 734 crore in India. Following a couple of years of pandemic gloom, theatrical cinema returned to the limelight in resounding style in 2023, making it the biggest year in terms of gross collection at the box office.
To unpack the success of 2023 and dive deep into the trends that look set to carry on in Indian cinema, The Telegraph Online spoke to Sanket Kulkarni, the head of business development (theatrical) at Ormax Media. Edited excerpts from the conversation follow.
According to Ormax, 2023 was the most successful year in the history of the Indian box office with a collection of Rs 12,226 crore. Was this simply because of the staggering success of a few films like Pathaan and Jawan?
Sanket Kulkarni: 2023 had a number of successful films — Jawan, Pathaan, Animal and Gadar 2. So many high-grossing films in a single year is a rare phenomenon. But 2023 was also great because a big part of a jigsaw puzzle got solved — a puzzle regarding what works in theatres post-pandemic, especially with the OTT wave gathering momentum.
2023 showed that a film must prove its theatrical worthiness, in the sense that you have to create a proposition to convince people that a film is worth their time at the theatres. For Gadar 2, that proposition was nostalgia. For Pathaan, it was Shah Rukh Khan’s return in an action role after a very long time. Another interesting trend that emerged in 2023 was that some of the makers managed to hit the sweet spot by creating a ‘cultural crossover’, combining the star power of Hindi star with the storytelling skills of directors from the South, be it in Jawan (with Shah Rukh and Atlee Kumar) or Animal (with Ranbir Kapoor and Sandeep Reddy Vanga).
The other aspect that made 2023 stand out is the franchise factor. In 2019, almost 17 per cent of the box office collection came from franchise films. In 2023, that number was 45 per cent, with the release of franchises like OMG 2, Dream Girl 2, Tiger 3. Even Pathaan was a part of the larger YRF Spy Universe.
What exactly is film marketing and why is it important in today’s context? Can you give us a specific example of how a film’s marketing has shaped its commercial outcome in recent times?
Sanket Kulkarni: Film marketing focuses on creating anticipation for a film. We, at Ormax Media, capture a metric called Appeal to gauge this anticipation. Appeal is the audience’s intention to watch a particular film in theatres. Film marketing is important because the fate of a film is usually sealed in its first weekend. So, the focus is to get as many people as possible to theatres in the first weekend. Eventually, a film’s lifetime box office collection is also a function of the collection it generates in the opening weekend. The better the opening, the better are the chances for the film to do well at the box office and recover its cost. And that opening is largely dependent on film marketing and star cast. Rare are the cases where a film has an underwhelming opening and then enjoys a good run thanks to a strong word of mouth.
What do the creatives [in film marketing] include? Most importantly, the teaser, the trailer and the songs. There’s a lot of content available these days resulting in clutter. To give you an idea, between January 2021 and December 2023, around 260 Hindi films released, but only 49 of these made more than Rs 10 crore in the opening weekend. Similarly, 519 Hindi web series and 164 Hindi General Entertainment Content (GEC) shows also launched in the same period. The point is that content marketers have to cut through this content clutter to reach and excite the audience.
To give you an example of effective film marketing in 2023, let me talk about Animal. Through our Film Campaign Tracking and First Day Forecasting tool called Ormax Cinematix, we’ve realised that the first creative of a film actually makes or breaks the campaign. Beyond the first creative, the trailer can impact the campaign by only eight to 10 percent. Even for films like Jawan and Pathaan, the trailers worked towards sustaining the Appeal garnered by the other creatives that released before them. However, Animal was an exception. Animal’s trailer managed to drive the Appeal by 22 percent as it got new audiences interested in the film later on in its campaign. The film eventually had a Rs 50 crore-plus first day.
Sanket Kulkarni, head of business development (theatrical) at Ormax Media
Has film marketing evolved in recent years? Because it feels that campaigns are shorter nowadays.
Sanket Kulkarni: Yes, earlier most films would have a six-week campaign. First a teaser, then a trailer and then the songs. Now it’s the teaser followed by songs with the trailer coming out just 10 to 12 days before the film’s release. This is something that seems to have been a learning from the South industries. In the South, there is a jam-packed calendar of releases, and to optimise the spends and increase the impact, shorter campaigns are preferred. But this approach also comes with a risk that if the final creative (trailer) doesn’t fire, there’s very little time to generate interest in a film before it hits theatres.
Looking at the highest-grossing movies for the first three months of 2024 as per The Ormax Box Office Report, Hindi films are mostly outnumbered by Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam ones. Is it fair to say that the dominance of Hindi cinema or Bollywood at a pan-India level is over?
Sanket Kulkarni: Between January and March 2024, Hindi has contributed 36 per cent of the box office, while the same numbers for Telugu and Tamil are 23 per cent and nine per cent, respectively. 2023 was one of the best years for Hindi cinema as it crossed the Rs 5,000 crore mark for the first time. But in the first three months of 2024, only Fighter and Shaitaan have been potential big releases for Hindi. Keeping that in mind, 36 per cent isn’t a bad number. I think it’s too early to have the conversation about Hindi cinema lagging behind films from the South. We’ll need to give it at least six to seven months into the year before we can have a meaningful debate on the same.
At the same time, there are definitely a lot of things that are working for the South. As per a recent report, a Hindi theatre-goer watches three films in a year in theatres. The same number for Tamil and Telugu is 8.1 and 9.2 films, respectively. Of course, with Hindi films, one is catering to a heterogenous market because you’re theoretically making a film for multiple states across India, whereas there’s more homogeneity for South films as they are focused on one state. However, what stands out for the South industry in general is its ability to make unique stories that are also commercially viable as well as its ability to harness and amplify stardom.
Look at films like Pushpa, K.G.F. and Kantara. These are very different films, but the combination of star power and storytelling makes them connect with the masses, resulting in a commercial blockbuster. The genesis for this goes back to the tradition of filmmaking in Tamil Nadu or Andhra Pradesh, where a director needed to make films that were acceptable to the lowest common denominator [among the audience] to remain financially viable, survive in the industry and get more budgets for the next release. This is a filmmaking formula that has been passed down generations, with the latest generation of filmmakers, such as Lokesh Kanagaraj, Atlee and Nelson Dilipkumar, building on this formula.
Moreover, there are multiple rituals that surround films in the South that give a glimpse of the fandom and audience engagement. From early morning shows to request screening — where you can request to pause and rewind a specific moment in, say, a Rajinikanth film — to monikers for South superstars, there’s a lot more going into the moviegoing experience. For the leading actors in the South, their on-screen characters and real-life personas often get blended in their films. Interestingly, it took an Atlee (Tamil director) and a Vanga (a Telugu director) to give Shah Rukh and Ranbir an on-screen image rehash. As mentioned earlier about superstar monikers, for Ranbir, Vanga even used the moniker of ‘Superstar’ in the Animal poster, something that is rare, to say the least, in Hindi cinema.
Lastly, there has been a lot of speculation recently about the feasibility of the YRF Spy Universe. How well do you see it and other franchises doing in the time to come?
Sanket Kulkarni: In Hollywood, at least for 2023, seven out of the top 10 films were franchise films. Hollywood has been successfully using the franchise model for more than 50 years now. Knowing what has worked once makes it easier to make it work again. Also, everyone who watches the first part of a franchise is a potential audience for the next part(s). This is why the second or third instalments of a franchise often do better commercially even though the first film seemed better in terms of content. With every successive instalment of a franchise, its universe, i.e., its audience keeps expanding. Hence, decisions like getting Shah Rukh and Salman Khan together in Pathaan and Tiger 3 are planned to expand the universe of the franchise.
Franchise films also have an inherent advantage for building anticipation. For instance, as per Ormax Media’s Most Awaited Hindi films (as of April 15, 2024), all the films in the top five are franchise films. These include Pushpa 2: The Rule, Hera Pheri 3, Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3, War 2 and Singham Again. Even though there’s been very limited promotions for all of these films, they remain highly anticipated.
