Page 85 - From Bombay to Bollywoord The Making of a Global Media Industri

72 << Industrial Identity in an Era of Reform

and internationally for theatrical and home video audiences. As the 2000s
progressed, Yash Raj Films began exclusively managing its home video and
international theatrical releases, as well as orchestrating its domestic releases
in a manner that distinguished it from other small-scale, family-run compa-
nies in the Bombay film industry. Yash Raj Films currently has distribution
offices in eleven major Indian cities as well as an office each in the United
Kingdom, the United States, and the United Arab Emirates. 32
To be sure, companies like Yash Raj Films or Rajshri Media, another
family-run company that has reimagined its scale of operations over the
past decade, appear to be exceptions. However, their trajectories do suggest
that small-scale and family-run production companies were not completely
averse to the notion of “going corporate” or forging relations with large
media corporations. Even as the producer-director-star network ensured
that media corporations’ capacity to refigure the domain of film production
would be limited, finance and distribution were another matter. Since 2000
small-scale and independent production companies have entered into distri-
bution arrangements with a handful of large media corporations, which has
translated both into a measure of stability and the opportunity to envision
33
overseas territories (see Appendix 2). In Lorenzen and Taube’s account of
ongoing organizational changes in Bollywood, it is in the domain of distri-
bution that media corporations have managed to challenge existing industry
34
practices. The top ten earning films during the 2000 to 2009 period were
distributed not only by established family companies like Yash Raj Films
and Rajshri Media but increasingly by corporate entities including UTV
Motion Pictures, Eros Entertainment, Reliance Entertainment, and Shree
Ashtavinayak Cine Vision. Further, as Adrian Athique and Douglas Hill
note in their analysis of the multiplex economy in urban India, these shifts
in distribution are intimately linked to dramatic changes in the domain of
35
exhibition. Identifying and analyzing a number of factors that contributed
to the “multiplex boom,” they go on to note that five companies—PVR Cin-
emas, Adlabs Films Ltd., Shringar Cinemas Ltd., INOX Leisure Ltd., and
FUN Cinemas—that “share some key characteristics, operational practices
and business outlooks in opposition to the traditional working model of
film exhibition in India” have come to operate over two-thirds of India’s
multiplexes. 36
Of course, it goes without saying that this is an emergent and rapidly evolv-
ing terrain. And we do need to keep in mind that these details regarding pro-
duction and distribution arrangements only tell part of the story. One way to
gain a better understanding of what is undoubtedly a complex set of accom-
modations and alliances is by examining how small-scale family businesses