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Industrial Identity in an Era of Reform >> 71

and Dharmputra (1961, Dutiful Son) under the production banner of B. R.
Films before launching Yash Raj Films and going on to produce and direct
his own films throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Although a notable selection
of his successful 1970s films (e.g., Deewar, TheWall, 1975, Trishul, Trident,
1978) were not produced by Yash Raj Films, the company’s own narrative
of its history seamlessly considers these part of Yash Raj Films’ legacy. Until
2000, Yash Raj Films produced 19 films, one every few years, with Yash
Chopra directing more than half of these. The company’s reputation was
not made, however, until the remarkable box office success of Dilwale Dul-
hania Le Jayenge (1995), the directorial debut for Yash Chopra’s son, Aditya
Chopra. The blockbuster reinforced Yash Raj Films’s commitment to lavish
romantic musicals and heralded significant structural changes in the com-
pany. From 2000 to 2009, the company produced 27 films, with Yash Cho-
pra credited as the director of only one. Beginning in the mid-1990s, Yash
Chopra stepped back from his directing duties and the father-son team took
on production and managerial positions in a rapidly expanding and verti-
cally integrated company.
In 1995, Yash Chopra teamed up with a management executive Sanjeev
Kohli (who would go on to become Yash Raj Films’ CEO) to create music-
based television shows, forming the Metavision Company in the process.
Although they discontinued this venture, the Chopras began producing tele-
vision shows again over a decade later (in 2010, the television production
division of Yash Raj Films produced five scripted programs for Sony Enter-
tainment Television). Starting in 2004, the company also started releasing
the music albums associated with its films and the label eventually began
producing smaller releases of a select number of nonfilm music artists. Over-
all, the most notable feature of Yash Raj Films’s activities since about 2000
surround Yash and Aditya Chopra’s efforts to style the company as “India’s
leading Entertainment Conglomerate” through promoting it as “veritably a
‘Studio’ in every sense.” As the company’s website proclaims, this involved
building a “state-of-the-art, fully integrated film studio” that included three
sound stages and a range of amenities that match international standards.
While expansion into music, television, and production/postproduc-
tion processes were crucial to positioning the company in relation to the
larger refashioning of Bollywood as a transnational media industry that was
more than Bombay cinema, the most important structural changes were in
the domain of film distribution. There is no doubt that Yash Raj Films had
established a formidable distribution infrastructure well before the moment
of corporatization. Beginning in the mid-1990s, the company began dis-
tributing its films and those of other companies in certain regions in India