Page 75 - From Bombay to Bollywoord The Making of a Global Media Industri

62 << Industrial Identity in an Era of Reform

Staging Difference

At the height of the economic boom in 2006–07, numerous news and trade
stories framed this period of transition as one in which new corporate stu-
dios would change the workings of the Bombay film industry. Consider,
for instance, this account in Mint, a leading English-language business and
finance daily newspaper:

Over the next two years, India’s film industry will actually start function-
ing like one. In this period, business groups and companies like Network
18, the Reliance-Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, UTV Motion Pictures,
Percept Holdings, Carving Dreams Entertainment Ltd., and Eros Interna-
tional have lined up between 120 and 140 projects at a total cost of around
Rs. 4,000 crore. Each of these companies will produce between 10 and
30 films in the next two years. All of them will have a steady pipeline of
releases. And most are signing actors, scriptwriters, and directors for more
than one project, ensuring that they have the required bench strength to
function pretty much like a motion picture assembly line. Or a Hollywood
studio (my emphasis). 16

In reporting on the organizational transition under way and Indian com-
panies’ emulation of the Hollywood model, stories like these also focused
attention on the challenges now facing small-scale, family-run production
companies. Glowing profiles of companies like UTV led by urbane and cos-
mopolitan media executives like Ronnie Screwvala—hailed by a journalist
for Newsweek magazine as “Bollywood’s Jack Warner” and whose company
was “setting the modern standard of studio efficiency in Bollywood”—were
set in stark contrast to the staid, old-fashioned, and feudal production com-
panies managed by a father-son (rarely -daughter) team. The safari suit-
17
wearing Hindi film producer was no match for the suave corporate execu-
tive who, according to these news and trade-press stories, had little patience
for established modes of production. Of course, small-scale production
companies and family businesses were recognized as important players,
given that their extensive social and financial networks had defined Hindi
film production and distribution since the late 1940s and early 1950s. And
while executives from companies like UTV and Reliance Entertainment
came to be seen as embodying a set of traits and values befitting a media
industry with global ambitions, exceptions were always made for influen-
tial players like Yash Chopra and Karan Johar. These prominent producer-
directors were framed as exemplars of the family firm in the Bombay film