There has been a lot of soul searching at our end: Vijay Singh

Interview with CEO, Fox Star Studios

After a spate of misses at the box office in 2015, Fox Star Studios has seen its fortunes turn around. With films such as Neerja and Kapoor and Sons hitting bulls-eye, the studio is optimistic about its future in India. CEO Vijay Singh talks to Urvi Malvania of Business Standard. Excerpts:

Fox has had an eventful six months. Tell us about the journey.

If you look at the first quarter, it has been fantastic. What is very gratifying is that we are actually the number one studio among Hollywood (releases) and Bollywood. The decision to go down a particular path, like doing certain kinds of films, had to be taken almost 18 months back and it has worked out.

What have been your key learnings?

The take away is that the script is the focus. The second thing is that choosing your stars is equally important because they drive the opening to a large extent. The third is the budget. There has been a lot of soul searching at our end from a marketing and distribution standpoint. The industry realises that we can't make a film at Rs 8 crore and spend Rs 10-12 crore on marketing and distribution. There needs to be a rationalisation and actors are now increasingly open about taking a share (as opposed to an outright fee).

What changes do you foresee?

One of the things I strongly believe (will happen) is consolidation. Three to five years on, there will be four to five studios and everyone else will be a creative production house. In that sense, the alliance we forged with Dharma (Productions) was actually a path breaker. The challenge of marketing has a big role to play. Twenty years back, it was easier to market a film for a single producer because he mostly just had to get posters made. Today, marketing involves multiple specialisations. From a production point of view, studios know the benefits of shooting at certain places out of India to get tax benefits. It has to do with the complexity of the business, which is linked with the maturity of the market.

Given the deficit of screens, should studios look at other exhibition options?

While we are looking at exhibition to increase, there are a lot of variables not in our control. An interesting analys that we have done shows there are around 4,000 screens that play Bollywood films. Successful films get 30 to 40 per cent occupancy (throughout the lifetime). I don't think there is a constraint for mid-budget films like Neerja or Kapoor and Sons. In case of a Salman film for example, we won't know till we have more screens (if the collections will be boosted by more screens). Today, for multiplex films, there is a lot of headroom for growth that can happen by increasing footfalls to the cinemas. Also the time has come for players to look at the space differently. Just an example, all the new constructions in cities like Mumbai and Delhi have club houses - it is an opportunity if someone can aggregate these properties and build 100 seater halls.

Piracy has been a pain-point for years now. Where are we falling short in combating it?

The biggest area of concern is piracy. There have to be deterrents from the legal system which make it seriously punishable. There needs to be a fear. It is easy to say the government is not doing anything, but the industry needs to come together. In Tamil Nadu, producers and exhibitors came together to provide tickets at such affordable rates that the lure of piracy from a price point becomes almost moot.