Bada Din To Mark Hmvs First Home Production
R P Goenkas Gramophone Company of India Ltd (GCIL), through subsidiary Gramco Films, has made a foray into film production so as to get the music rights to the films it produces.
Gramco's first home production, a Hindi film called Bada Din (Big Day) is nearing completion, and is a small-budget film. But the music is by star Bollywood composers Jatin-Lalit, who have churned out mega hits in the recent past and the lyrics by celebrity songwriter Javed Akhtar, whose wife, Shabana Azmi, plays the central role in the film.
Says Ujjal Gupta, vice president, commercial, GCIL, who is also looking after Gramco: We intend to produce three more films this year, one big budget and the other two small budget ones.
A big budget film means an investment of about Rs 5 crore. Gupta refused to disclose an exact figure for the budget for the current year, saying the total figure will be somewhere between Rs 5 to Rs 6 crore.
Bada Din, Gramcos first home production, would be completed by May 1997 and handed over to the company. Negotiations with distributors would begin after the completion of the film.
Gramco has, however, churned out two joint productions, ``Sapnay (with AVM of Chennai) and K Balachanders ``Kalki in Tamil, produced with Kavithalay.
Sapnay stars Kajol, southern dancing star Prabhu Deva and Arvind Swamy and is dependent to a good degree on the music by Indias boy wonder A R Rahman. This means the music, which is owned by GCIL, at least, is set to be a success.
The music rights were getting too expensive, so the best way was to produce the film ourselves, an RPG group source admits.
The financing of films will be done from the companys internal accruals and advances from distributors.
The company is also trying to get loans from banks, which is generally difficult for the film industry.
Bada Dins original story was written by director Anjan Dutt, who is a popular stage and film personality and singer on the Bengali circuit.
Set on a Christmas day in the backstreets of Calcutta, the film, Dutts first, revolves around an Anglo-Indian household which is suddenly plunged into terror by the onslaught of the underworld.
The story is that of average, ordinary people who, following a taumatic experience, finally transcend their mediocrity.
Shabana Azmi apart, the cast of Bada Din includes supermodel Marc Robinson (of Kama Sutra condoms ad fame), who makes his film debut with the movie, Tara Deshpande, Vicky Chopra and Aloke Nath.