Vying for the lion's share
Ranveer Singh joins the bandwagon of Bollywood stars who prefer the profit-sharing model for their films.
It’s no secret that A-listers in the Bollywood command a hefty paycheck for their films, but now their bank balance seems to get heavier from the profits they make with their successful films. The latest to join this bandwagon is Ranveer Singh. As the profits from the film Simmba are being distributed, Ranveer is roaring the loudest. The actor who also came on board for the Rohit Shetty-directed film as a shareholder for profits from the sale of rights, as well as the ticket sales, has earned a whopping sum of money, putting him on par with the Khans, Akshay Kumar and Ajay Devgn.
“Ranveer also had Padmaavat releasing last year and Simmba came towards the end of 2018 spilling on to 2019. The satellite, digital, overseas and other rights of Simmba went for a whopping amount of Rs 100 crore and the box office netted Rs 240 crore which meant that the producers’ share from the box office was over Rs 120 crore plus the amount received from other sales including satellite, digital music and overseas. With this, Ranveer has now shot into the superstar league,” adds our source.
But this trend of profit sharing has been around since the 70s. Says Atul Mohan, movie business analyst and editor of Complete Cinema, “Earlier actors like Jeetendra used to take Bombay territory as a fee instead of cash. Now when stars are producers, they take a fee plus an equal share of profits along with co-producers. If they are not the producers, they take a higher fee and a higher share of profits. This also depends on who the producer is and what relationship they share.”
No wonder now that Ranveer’s wife and top star Deepika Padukone too has taken the same deal for Chhapaak and the couple also has a profit sharing in Kabir Khan’s film ‘83 as well. “The buzz in the trade is that she is being paid Rs 12 crore for Chhapaak apart from being a 20 per cent partner in the profits. As for ‘83 they are equal partners along with Reliance and Kabir Khan apart from Ranveer taking Rs 13 crore as his fee and Rs 12 crore for Deepika,” informs the trade source.
Akshay Kumar is one actor who tries to make his films as inexpensive as possible by taking a cut in the salary and making sure he gets a huge share of the profits. “In fact for certain films, he takes Rs 20 crores as his remuneration and takes 80 per cent of the profits of the films. The production cost of such films are not more than 25-30 crore and around 15-20 crores go into the release and distribution of these films. Sometimes it is around 25 crores also depending on the project and the number of screens the makers get,” says a movie business analyst.
Stars like Salman Khan usually goes in for a Rs 50 crore fee plus a 50 per cent share of the profits on account of also being a producer of the film. In his case, he has a back end deal for the satellite and hence he takes the satellite rights of the film. Ditto with Shah Rukh Khan as well whose company Red Chillies always is a producer. Aamir Khan has earlier admitted that he goes for a profit share and does not charge for the film to make it financially viable.
Ajay Devgn too has a similar back end deal for satellite and takes that as his fee. If he is the producer of the film, he has further profits. And for the VFX of his films, his company NYVFXwala (with the initials of his kids Nysa and Yug) gets to bill for it. Ranbir Kapoor had reportedly taken Rs 20 crore as his fee for his last release Sanju plus a 25 per cent profit share.
Others from the younger lot too are into back end satellite deals. “Both Varun, as well as Tiger Shroff, also have these deals where their monies are based on a deal worth around Rs 30 crore from satellite these days,” adds the analyst. The trend of back end deals emanated in Hollywood and is being done very successfully by many Hollywood stars who are part of multi-million dollar movie projects and it does seem that Bollywood too is going the Hollywood way.
—Sanskriti Media