27 Producers Fines Rs. 1 Lakh Each For 2009 Producer-Multiplex Issue

The Competition Commission of India (CCI) on 25th May imposed a penalty of Rs. 1 lakh each on 27 film producers on charges of colluding through a cartel to exploit cinema owners. The CCI found the producers guilty of entering into anti-competitive agreement.

In 2009, producers and distributors decided not to screen their films in multiplexes over issues of revenue-sharing. The Multiplex Association of India (MAI) had filed a complaint then against the United Producers & Distributors Forum. The CCI had found film producers entering into anti-competitive agreements to collectively stop exhibition of films in the multiplexes. It held that the producers had violated sections 3 and 4 of the Competition Act, 2002, which pertain to anti-competitive agreement and abuse of dominant position.

It is after a long time that all 28 shows at Gaiety cinema, Bandra, Bombay and all 21 shows at Maratha Mandir, Bombay were house-full last week. The film which achieved this feat was ‘Dabangg’ in its 1st week!

The Salman Khan starrer has created history by drawing all 56 shows full in 1st week at Lisa-I and Lisa-II, Sehore (C.I.) with a whopping collection of Rs. 5,03,720. The film garnered Rs. 1,35,879 in 1st week at Anshay Talkies, Ashta (C.I.) against a capacity of Rs. 1,48,460/-. The village has a population of just 35,000. ‘Dabangg’ has collected a net of Rs. 3.33 crore in 1st week from C.I. circuit. An all-time record!

The film gathered Rs. 4.40 crore (net) in 1st week from Rajasthan circuit which is the highest ever any film has collected in the first week.

In Delhi and U. P. it collected a record-making net of Rs. 19.20 crore in the 1st week in Delhi-U.P.! The film has also netted Rs. 7.05 crore in its 1st week in East Punjab. Again, the highest ever collection of the first week! ‘Dabangg’ has created history by collecting Rs. 3,22,290 in 1^st week at Amar Talkies, Dhamtari (C.P. Berar).

Looks like Salman Khan’s juggernaut called ‘Dabangg’ is on its way to complete domination!

With the ongoing battle between Eros International and the CCCA, will ‘Anjaana Anjaani’ not release next week?

Of course not! It will release next week, as scheduled. There will be a middle path which the CCCA and Eros will arrive at. You can’t expect a film’s release to be cancelled because of distributors’ claims which are far far less than the cost of the new film!

With ‘Dabangg’ having succeeded the way it has, what should Abhinav Kashyap’s price as director be?

One leading producer has already offered him Rs. 10 crore for a film! And the offer was made before Dabangg was released. The offer was probably based on the pre-release euphoria the film had generated!

I have made a film for Rs.1 crore, obviously, without stars. How do I release this film?

Very unlikely that you will get distributors for it. If you don’t have money for promotion, it is also unlikely that you will get playing time in cinemas. Probably, you can try releasing it directly on a satellite channel – that is, if you are lucky to find some channel which would care to telecast an unreleased film. Channels don’t generally go for such films because they have to spend heavily on promotion.

Hansa, Praful, Babuji & Jayshree from the tele-serial ‘Khichdi’ are back with their goofy antics! Catch Supriya Pathak, Rajeev Mehta, Anang Desai and Nimisha Vakharia in Khichdi – The Movie.

It’s white night with Sonakshi, Rituparna & Sangeeta in white dresses. Find out which of these ladies got were Fad or Fail!

Sonakshi Sinha looked drop-dead-amazing at Narendra Kumar Ahmed’s show at the opening night of Lakme Fashion Week 2010.

Sangeeta Bijlani looked drab in a white ill-fitting dress with matching white shoes. By the way, is she back on the party circuit?

Rituparna Sengupta has emptied her entire make-up box on her face at the premiere of her movie Life Express. She shows off her coral-meets-bling inspired blouse. We could have done without that, sweetie.

Divya Dutta & Yashpal Sharma at the premiere of their movie.

Shweta Keswani keeps it short at the movie screening.

Vinay Pathak is already laughing at the film.

In the Feature Film Category the following awards were announced:

Best Feature Film In Each Of The Language Specified In The Schedule Viii Of The Constitution:

In The Non- Feature Film Category The Following Awards Were Announced:

In The Best Writing On Cinema Category Following Awards Were Announced:

Amitabh Bachchan has added another award to his list (he probably has a room full of them by now!). The veteran actor won the National Award for Best Actor at the 57th National Awards for his role in the movie Paa in which he played a child suffering from progeria. This is Amitabh’s 4^th National Award (3^rd as Best Actor). Big B’s son, Abhishek Bachchan, who played Amitabh’s father in the movie, was not disappointed as his movie Delhi 6 won the Nargis Dutt award for best film with social message. Arundhuti Nag, who played Amitabh Bachchan’s grandmother in the film, won the award for Best Supporting Actress.

Aamir Khan, Sharman Joshi and R. Madhavan’s 3 Idiots won the National Award for Best Popular Film.  The movie also won the Wholesome Entertainment Award. Aamir, who is busy with the promotions of his wife Kiran Rao’s film Dhobi Ghat, has more than reason to cheer!

The Award Winners are as follows:

Best Actor: Amitabh Bachchan for his role in ‘Paa’

Best Popular Film: ‘3 Idiots’

Best film: Kutty Srank (Malayalam)

Best Actress: Ananya Chatterjee for her role in Abohoman (Bengali)

Best Supporting Actor: Farooq Sheikh for his role in Lahore

Best Supporting Actress: Arundhuti Nag for role in ‘Paa’

Wholesome Entertainment Award: ‘3 Idiots’

Best Director: Rituparna Ghosh for ‘Abhoman’

Best Music: Amit Trivedi for Dev D

Nargis Dutt award for best film with social message: ‘Delhi-6’

- By Koimoi.com Team

]]> http://www.koimoi.com/bollywood-news/amitabh-bachchan-3-idiots-win-national-awards/feed/ 1 http://www.koimoi.com/box-office/box-office-historic-opening-for-dabangg-we-are-family-crashes/ http://www.koimoi.com/box-office/box-office-historic-opening-for-dabangg-we-are-family-crashes/#comments Mon, 13 Sep 2010 11:58:55 +0000 Komal Nahta http://koimoi.c2w.com/?p=12088 With its bumper publicity, the Dabangg epidemic has taken India in its grip. The film has had an earth-shattering opening everywhere and is all set to write new box-office history in the first weekend itself! Business in single-screen cinemas will be historic, of course, but collections in multiplexes will also be outstanding. ‘Dabangg’ will click in big, medium and small centres, with the Eid festival and the heavy anticipation only adding to the business. New records were created at hundreds of cinemas on the opening day.

The other release this weekend, Resident Evil 4: Afterlife holds little appeal for the Hindi film-going audiences, and will do ordinary business. The opening was below the mark almost everywhere in spite of Eid holiday.

Last week’s release We Are Family has not been appreciated. After a fair weekend, the film crashed at most places. Total 7,99,07,070 from 233 cinemas.

Last week’s other releases, The Film Emotional Atyachar, Mallika and Piranha 3D have fared poorly. ‘The Film Emotional Atyachar’ had a total 63,29,249 from 256 cinemas while ‘Mallika’ had a total 30,93,679 from 117 cinemas.

John Abraham starrer Aashayein is out while Neil Nitin Mukesh-Deepika Padukone’s Lafangey Parindey is in its 3rd week with total 48,81,544 from 169 cinemas. Aamir Khan’s Peepli Live raked in a total 36,51,628 from 93 cinemas in its 4^th week.

Once Upon A Time In Mumbaai is going good with total 26,56,264 from 71cinemas in its 6^th week.

Detailed collections:

India Box Office Collections for the week of September 3 – September 9, 2010 (Figures in Rs.)

- By Komal Nahta

Vidya Balan has got all eyes on her since her femme fatale act in Ishqiya. We even thought that we’ll be seeing her on screen with Sanjay Dutt in Rascals, but alas, it is not to be.

Old sardar? Check. Loving husband? Check. Half-man-half-woman! Check. Now get ready to see Aamir Khan in a brand new avatar (again) as a milkman!

When a guy cheats on his wife, the least you’d expect him to do is brood a bit, but not Wayne Rooney. The English striker has been gloating about how his wife would never leave him and hasn’t even tried to conceal his relationship with prostitutes.

Apart from Eid being auspicious for both the stars, it’s also common knowledge that Salman and Akshay are largely blamed for beginning the trend of actors charging excessively for films. In an interview with Komal Nahta, Salman flatly denied the charge even turning the table on his producers, “I don’t charge that much money at all, even if I do charge, I don’t get most of it…Now I’ve started making strict contracts.” He further adds, “My image will change, and people will probably call me money-minded but if you sign me, you have to pay up. It doesn’t matter if you earn a profit or not, you wouldn’t sign me in the first place if I didn’t guarantee you a profit” he shrugs.

In an interview during the promotion of Khatta Meetha, Akshay Kumar swatted away the accusation, “This accusation is baseless,” he explains, “Because if you sign me, even for an exorbitant price, you did so because there is something for you in it.” He adds, “I figured a solution for this (the studio system) and set up my own production (Hari Om Productions). I’m producing Khatta Meetha and I’m selling it at a right price. So people can’t blame me of overpricing because I’ve made my price zero and I’m joining hands with the distributors…We (Salman Khan and Akshay Kumar)don’t hold a gun to someone’s head and make them give us the money. You can’t blame us for this.”

The birthday boy seems to know his numbers, but we’ll let him off the hook for now. While Akki will be celebrating his special day with his family, Salman might just be in for a noisy weekend looking at the waves ‘Dabangg’ has created even before its release!

Here’s wishing Akshay Kumar a wonderful birthday and Salman Khan a huge success!

Lalit Pandit  (of Jatin-Lalit duo), the music director who has composed only this number in the ‘Dabangg’ album (the music for all the other songs is scored by Sajid-Wajid), had been after producer Arbaaz Khan and writer-director Abhinav Kashyap to give him an opportunity to present tunes for songs for their first film. Recalls Abhinav, “Although we had signed Sajid-Wajid and had also finalised the tunes for four songs, we, nevertheless, went to Lalit to hear him out.” Butts in Lalit, “Basically, they had come to me to do some time-pass.”

“Not exactly time pass,” counters Abhinav, adding, “We still needed an item song for the film and were on the hunt for an exciting tune. So, we thought, if Lalit has something nice to offer, we could ask him to compose that song.”

Anyway, after Lalit presented them a number of tunes, the two weren’t quite satisfied. It was then that Lalit told them, he had some scratch tunes recorded. “The first song we heard from those banked tunes was the Munni song,” says an excited Abhinav. “The moment we heard the line Main Zandu balm huyi in the song, both, Arbaaz and I, knew we had got what we wanted. Right there, we shook hands and told Lalit, this would be our item song. Lalit offered to take established voices for the song, but we asked him who had sung the scratch. He told us, they were Mamta Shankar and Aishwarya. And we insisted that it had to be them and only them who would record the number. I liked the Suraiya-style nasal accent of Mamta,” ends Abhinav. And so does the world today!

- By Komal Nahta

After courting controversy in cricket, Veena Malik has set her eyes on Bollywood. The Pakistani actress is currently in the limelight for her alleged involvement in a betting scandal with former boyfriend Mohammed Asif.

Once upon a time, Karan Johar was known for his sappy movies, but looks like the director-producer is going the Sanjay Gupta way with adaptations, official remakes and what not. His We Are Family was from the Hollywood flick Step Mom, and now his Kareena starrer Short Term Shaadi sounds very much like the Cameron Diaz-Ashton Kutcher film What Happens In Vegas. The director, however, denies it…

We’ll leave you with an incredible trailer of Black Swan, directed by Darren Aronofsky, starring Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis. Watch here.

- By Koimoi.com Team

Salman Khan, Sonakshi Sinha, Arbaaz Khan, Sonu Sood, music director Wajid and Sohail Khan were promoting their upcoming film Dabangg in Nagpur when a reporter cheekily asked why they were emphasizing their film as an Eid release even though the Hindu festival of Ganesh Chaturthi was around the same time. Salman didn’t want to reply to the malicious question and refused to answer.

Though Salman Khan maintained a dignified silence, Sonakshi was quick to defend her co-star.  She tweeted, “Just to create controversy or raise TRPs, using religion is disgusting. Especially with someone like him (Salman). When will these guys (reporters) grow up and see the broader picture?”

We agree with Sonakshi here. The disrespectful reporter should have known better, the Khan family is one of the most secular families in Bollywood. Salman Khan’s sister Arpita is married to a Hindu, his sisters-in-law, Malaika Arora and Seema Sachdev, are Christian and Hindu respectively. If that isn’t secular enough, we don’t know what is.

- By Koimoi.com Team

This, in spite of the Competition Commission of India (CCI) having then restrained the KFCC from taking action against any exhibitor releasing Reliance Big Pictures’ ‘Raavan’ and ‘Raavanan’ in Karnataka. The CCI had ordered that the KFCC had no right to take any action, direct or indirect, to prevent any exhibitor from exhibiting ‘Raavan’ or ‘Raavanan’ if the exhibitor was willing and desirous of screening the films.

- By Komal Nahta

Revealing how the hottest project this year so far came to become the star’s baby, brother Sohail Khan reveals, “Abhinav Kashyap came to narrate the script to Arbaaz Khan as he wanted him to play a role in his maiden film as writer and director. Arbaaz got excited when he heard the script as he saw a lot of potential in the script. He sounded me about the script and wanted me to hear it.”

Sohail’s reaction to the subject was the same as that of Arbaaz. It may be mentioned here that before Abhinav decided to put the project together with Arbaaz and another small actors in the two lead roles, he had faced rejection from many producers and corporate houses as they had not found the story engaging enough.

Anyway, Arbaaz’s business mind was ticking. He wanted to produce the film. That is when Sohail and Arbaaz decided to narrate the script to eldest brother, Salman, and firstly, get his reaction to whether Arbaaz should turn producer with the film, and secondly, whether he would play the main lead in the film. Salman saw tremendous potential in the film’s story when he heard it, recalls an excited Sohail. “Bhai (Salman) told the debut-making writer-director that what he had written made the film look like an art film, but that he saw a lot of commercial potential in it. He next told Abhinav to concentrate on the film’s making, ambience etc. but to allow him (Salman) make it more commercial.” Obviously, Abhinav was getting what he hadn’t imagined in his wildest of dreams. Salman came on board as the hero and unofficial producer. Next, the film with a planned budget of Rs. 7 crore was visualised on a far bigger canvas and re-budgeted at Rs. 30 crore. Commercial songs were added in the script, which, incidentally, have caught the entire nation’s fancy since the last more than a month.

The rest, as they probably might say after the film’s release on 10th September, is history…

- By Koimoi.com Team

And not just any 3D, the film was shot on James Cameron & Vincent Pace’s patented Fusion Camera System. The exact one used for the famous Avatar.

Besides kicking some Undead backside, Milla Jovovich has a modeling and acting career as well as a critically acclaimed musical album, The Divine Comedy in 1994. So it’s not surprising that she and director Paul (Wes) Anderson met and married in 2009 while working on the first two movies!

‘Resident Evil: Afterlife’ also has long ties to Salman Khan. Ali Larter (from the TV series ‘Heroes’ once starred with Salman Khan in Marigold) shared action screen time with the sexy Milla Jovovich. If one ‘Heroes’ star wasn’t enough, they roped in Wentworth Miller from the TV series ‘Prison Break’.

- By Koimoi.com Team

The actor, who made his mark playing grey shades in Darr: A Violent Love Story and Baazigar, said thrillers “seemed (like) an idea” and so did stories that were more involved with reality. Shah Rukh accepted that “our screenplays are a bit hackneyed” and added that, “maybe time for screenplay schools…or courses.”

Last but not the least, the Bollywood actor, who is now playing a superhero in his next film, RA.ONE, accepted that he had a thing for biopics.  “I am also one for biopics…not only of very famous people…but of lesser known people who have interesting stories to share,” wrote Shah Rukh. The actor has already played the Indian emperor Asoka in the 2001 film by that name.

- By Koimoi.com Team

Directed by Habib Faisal, ‘Do Dooni Chaar’ is the story of a middle-class family. Rishi Kapoor plays a school teacher and the head of the family which is trying to cope with inflation. His wife (played by Neetu Singh) loves the good life. The couple has a demanding teenage daughter (Aditi Vasudev) and a fast-track son (Archit Krishna).The real action begins when the family decides to graduate from a scooter to a car.

- By Koimoi.com Team

Call it a coincidence or whatever you may, but when Aditya Chopra thought of casting Deepika Padukone as the female lead in Lafangey Parindey and telephoned director Pradeep Sarkar to get his reaction, the latter was directing her in an ad film. Pradeep Sarkar, who has made more than a thousand advertisement shorts, was shooting an ad film with Deepika when suddenly, he received a phone call from Adi. An excited Adi asked Sarkar if Deepika would suit the character of Pinky Palkar in the film. The film and ad filmmaker smiled and informed Aditya that the actress was with him at that moment, shooting for an ad film. Once free from the ad film, Sarkar discussed the casting with Chopra and the latter then signed Deepika for the female lead’s role.

- By Koimoi.com Team

This may sound unbelievable but it’s true. Way back in 1987 was released a film, West Is West, which was made in Hollywood. There were auditions held in India for the lead role. Aamir Khan (whose Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak had yet to release), Ashutosh Gowariker (who was to later direct Aamir in Lagaan), Raj Zutshi and Deepak Tijori auditioned for the role. While Aamir failed the test, Ashutosh was selected and, therefore, ended up playing the hero in the film.