My company helped produce some award-winning films! We decided to move on to more lucrative opportunities though.

Read part 1 of what I learnt along the way over here.

Money Is Probably Why Disha Patani Doesn’t Do Many Movies

We never worked with Disha Patani in any kind of capacity. But anytime someone compares her subsequent body of work with the reverence that she was treated with after her breakout role in M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story, to conclude that her career hasn’t lived up to its potential, I feel they’re missing what’s actually going on.

It doesn’t make any financial sense for Disha Patani to act in films. She makes an order of magnitude more money from ad shoots than she would from a movie. Any time spent showing up to a film set (or doing dubbing, or press tours, or wrap parties) is a big financial sacrifice for her – along with all the attendant risks of people saying she’s tough to work with because she won’t, for example, make herself available for extra shooting days (i.e., sacrifice more money than she already has).

All of this is compounded by the gender imbalance in the industry. Women earn a fraction of what men earn, and the male stars will often end up deciding when and how long a shoot will last for, while the female “co”-star is expected to fall into line. The disdain with which women are treated can be shocking. I once had a casting director tell me that he expected to be able to get “a girl” for a two-month shoot for ₹10-15 Lakhs (~$13,000). He was talking about a National Award Winner. It’s terrifying to imagine what less well-known female faces in the industry face.

So picking a film over an ad shoot means that Patani is earning pennies when she could be earning dollars, to be treated as a second-class citizen by the cast and crew. This will be in contrast to the glamour-treatment that brands – run by professional MBAs with sensitivity and diversity training – will give to celebrities endorsing their products.

We don’t think cricketers that focus on the IPL instead of a Test career have performed below their potential. We understand and respect the need for them to build a financial cushion in the short period of time when their bodies are in peak demand.

The actors with a prolific filmography are often envious of stars like Patani that, somehow, people know, talk about, and see in brand campaigns, despite them not performing in many films.

The Financial Incentives In Bollywood Are Very Different From Those Of Hollywood

Hollywood unions have negotiated a system of residuals. Actors, directors, and writers can continue to receive residuals for movies and TV shows that they were part of decades ago. If Netflix brings a movie to streaming you can expect that the cast saw some of the money from the deal.

Bollywood doesn’t operate like that at all. Stars are often paid for the number of “shoot days”. After the movie is released it’s rare for them to be directly impacted by the financial success of the movie. (They will be indirectly impacted – a super hit will mean more ad offers).

That’s likely one of the reasons why stars are so interchangeable in Bollywood sequels. If I’m a Hollywood actor I know that if the sequel does well then I can also expect sales of the movie that came before it to see a bump – alongside my residuals. I thus have an incentive to contribute to that specific cinematic universe because it means more money for me. As a Bollywood actor I’m largely indifferent to the success of my past body of work.

Indeed, that’s why sequels aren’t that big in Bollywood in the first place. The producers of the movie will have an incentive to make sequels to a blockbuster film…but all the cast and crew now know how successful the film was and will ask for a significant pay bump. The incentives of the industry discourage the kind of sequel and cinematic universe heavy storytelling that are common in the West. Or they lead to sequels such as Cocktail 2 where none of the original cast returns – something that’s almost unheard of in the West.

It’s also why you’re probably not attracting the very best writers. A Hollywood writer that makes an era-defining film can expect to live off the residuals for decades if not a lifetime. A Bollywood writer can expect no such security. Beyond the (meagre) amount they would have been paid for writing the script, all they can hope is to negotiate a better fee for the next project.

Nepotism Is A Natural Consequence

Perhaps because those looking for a financially rewarding career can expect much more lucrative opportunities outside of Indian entertainment, my experience was of an industry that lacked a certain degree of professionalism.

What if an actor abruptly decides that they feel too tired to shoot. What is the production team going to do? Risk incurring the wrath of the actor by going to the press? Or meekly accepting what has happened and telling the rest of the cast and crew that the shoot won’t happen that day. Remember everyone still has to be paid for that day. You also have to pay for the equipment, the set, and everything else.

The reverse happens too. What if the producer doesn’t pay you? What is the actor going to do? Sue? The Indian legal system is so slow that there have been instances of judgments being rendered after litigants have passed away. And by going to the courts the stiffed actor will be telling other film producers both that the actor is difficult to work with, and that the actor is seemingly not worth very much money.

So much of actor negotiations for a film involve the structuring of payments. How much will be paid before the shoot begins? How much halfway through the shoot? What will be paid only after dubbing is complete? As a film nears completion you can expect the producer to start making more and more excuses for why payments are delayed.

In a low trust society with poor legal enforcement mechanisms family ties matter a lot more. A budding young actor is far less likely to refuse to show up for a shoot if they grew up calling the producer Chacha. For a producer that’s staking a large amount of money on a project with, statistically speaking, very little chance of earning a decent return, it’s enticing to go for the lowest risk option. Indeed, you can also hope that the young star’s more famous family members will help promote the film for free giving you an extra incentive to bet on the familiar.