Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
BOI: Siddharth, can you introduce us to your team and explain their individual mandates?
Siddharth Roy Kapur (SRK): Rucha, Amar and Manish are creative directors who run their individual production slates, from development to creative to pre-production to post-production to final delivery of the film. Each one of them functions like an independent producer within the system, with their own slate of movies. Dhananjayan, we call him ‘GD’, looks after our South business and is based in Chennai.
Then we have Amrita, who handles all revenues worldwide apart from India theatrical, from syndication to overseas revenues. Gaurav looks after India theatrical and Shikha looks after marketing.
This is the stellar team that has been delivering success after success over the years and will continue to do so.
BOI: Is the team shared between UTV Spotboy and Disney?
SRK: Yes, it is. For example, any of the creative directors could be simultaneously working on a slate of three films, one branded Disney, one UTV Motion Pictures and one UTV Spotboy, as the case may be. Spotboy is a brand that tells the audience ‘this experience might be a little different from what you are used to’. It’s a brand we put on a film which we think is pushing the envelope or breaking `new ground.
BOI: Sid, can you talk about the journey of UTV and team members who have joined along the way?
SRK: We started as a producing studio in 2005. Ronnie’s (Ronnie Screwvala) vision at the time was to set up a studio model in India where you have development, production, marketing, distribution, syndication all under one roof. The idea was to bring the entire life cycle of the movie under one unit, from conception of the idea of the film, to its production, marketing, release and then the perpetuation of the film after the release.
Many of our senior team members at this table have been around pretty much since the early days of the studio. The average length of time each one has spent with the company is around five years, which I think in any creative enterprise, especially in a structured set-up, is higher than the norm. Everyone has been through the ups and downs, and thankfully there have been more ups than downs. We each have a lot of institutional learning ingrained within ourselves, which helps hopefully in taking more right decisions than wrong ones over time. Often, we instinctively know what the other is thinking and that’s a comforting feeling.
BOI: You had one creative head until 2011, and he was replaced by Rucha,Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Amar and Manish. Also Gaurav joined the team much later. What has each one brought to the table?
SRK: Shikha joined us in 2005, actually just a few months after I did. At that point of time within the industry, marketing was considered to be quite perfunctory. It was about doing a few billboards, doing your listings ads, and having print ads out closer to release. Rang De Basanti changed all that forever. For the first time, there were 10 brands associated with a movie, and co-branded TV spots were cracked with a seamlessly integrated message. We launched a customised Coke bottle with the visuals of the film on it, we had multiple city visits and launched a new clothing line with a fashion show in which the entire cast, Aamir included, walked the ramp! All this now seems par for the course, but was revolutionary back then.
The same year, when we did Khosla Ka Ghosla, we knew it was a small film with big potential so we decided to go hammer and tongs and market the hell out of it. The great part was that Shikha and her fledgling team, at the time, was able to come up with ideas that pushed the envelope and took nothing for granted. That same intensity and passion to do something innovative and different with each film has continued and in fact grown over the years.
Gaurav joined us in 2009, and he brought an incredible sense of science and analytics to the table, when it came to distribution of our films in India. The repository of information we had with us had really not been mined to the extent it could have been. What he ensured was that we have every cinema screen in every corner of the country mapped out and analysed, not just on the basis of the obvious statistics of occupancy and geography, but on the basis of tastes and receptiveness to different kinds of movies over the years. This helps Gaurav and his team to add analytics and logic to their release strategy in an industry where so much is anyway about gut feel and instinct. They apply their experience and knowledge to ensuring that there are no templated release plans, and that each film from a Ship Of Theseus (SOT) to a Chennai Express, is given a very customised and well thought through release. All credit to him.
SRK: Manish…?
Manish Hariprasad (MH): I joined in 2007.
SRK: Manish is really the man behind Disney UTV’s involvement with Chennai Express. He pursued Rohit Shetty assiduously and aggressively, with the single point agenda of making a movie with him. I think Rohit had his perception of what it might be like to work with a studio, since he hadn’t done so in the past. Manish went in and demolished that perception, in a good way, of course.
MH: Thanks to my hairstyle! (Smiles)
SRK: (Laughs) Yes, first with his hairdo, because when Rohit saw him with his long hair, he said, ‘Tu corporate wala nahi ho sakta hai.’ This year itself, Kai Po Che and Chennai Express are two of the movies Manish has brought to the table and I think that gives you a sense of the range of his creative range.
Amrita is the veteran at this table, and she has been with Disney UTV longer than any of us, more than 10 years. She is the one person in the studio who has worked across pretty much every division, from production to marketing, to distribution, to syndication, and that has given her a great all round and in depth perspective of the filmmaking process.
When we started our international distribution division from scratch, we were complete novices and had to establish offices in new countries and build new relationships in markets with distributors and exhibitors who had no idea who this upstart new studio was. And today, when you look at all our content so widely distributed across all modes and platforms worldwide, a lion’s share of that credit goes to Amrita. She and her team, with persistence, resilience and an aggressive never-say-die approach, have made sure that Disney UTV content has found its way to every possible platform available, and often to those not traditionally available, to Hindi movies. Her sense of ownership and passion for the studio comes from having grown up with it from its very inception.
As far as GD is concerned, we really didn’t have a South business at all till… when did you join us, GD?
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
G Dhananjayan (GD): In 2010.
SRK: What GD has managed to do is forge relationships with talent and partners very quickly and to great effect. His perseverance and high energy approach has helped us so much over the last three years in a market where we have had to establish our credentials from scratch. He wears the creative and the commercial hats, and has helped us understand the South business tremendously. Now, we do almost four or five films in the South every year across Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam cinema.
BOI: Now we come to Amar.
Amar Butala (AB): I joined in 2010 as well.
SRK: And in a short span, Amar has managed to identify and snap up rights to interesting movies and books that we are now actively developing into screenplays. A lot of the groundwork that Amar has done in the last couple of years will come into play by next year, or the year after that, with these very interesting slate of movies going into production.
BOI: Rucha is next in line.
Rucha Pathak (RP): I joined in 2006.
SRK: Rucha has been with us for seven years and if you look at the range and quality of the movies she has been involved in, from Life… In A Metro to Dev D, to Barfi! to Paan Singh Tomar, to Welcome To Sajjanpur to ABCD to Chillar Party to No One Killed Jessica, you can clearly see her incredibly strong creative instincts and ability to hone in on content that will push the envelope creatively, while also emerging commercially successful. These are some of the films we are proudest of and it’s no coincidence that Rucha has been involved in bringing each of them to life. They are also films we have developed and nurtured from scratch with the writers and directors. So that’s the team.
AB: Wow, Sid! That was great!
SRK: (Laughs) I think this is the most I have ever spoken about each of you.
AB: Yeah! (Laughs)
SRK: I am done now and I will not utter another word. No more questions for me! (Laughs)
BOI: After Disney’s acquisition of the company, which was a landmark deal,Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
what’s the experience been like… ups and downs? And what was it like before the deal? Let’s start with Shikha.
Shikha Kapur (SK): As far as the integration with Disney is concerned, it didn’t really change the way we function when it comes to creative decisions. Of course, it brought in a lot of changes in processes and systems, but that’s only natural. In terms of ups and downs, as Sid said, we have gone through a great deal of experiences with every film and have learnt a lot along the way. The reason we have had such great marketing muscle behind each film, whether it was a Ship Of Theseus or a Chennai Express, was because of the collective weight of our experiences through the years.
Gaurav Verma (GV): As far as integration goes, there’s an English slate of films that we are also distributing now and that’s quite interesting. But after the integration, as a studio, I don’t think there has been much else that has changed on the India distribution front.
Our network is tremendously strong today, both in reach, penetration and depth of knowledge and experience. As a studio, we are in distribution because we make movies and not the other way around. We don’t make movies because we have a distribution platform available. It is important to always remember that and to tailor your distribution plans to suit the individuality and uniqueness of each film we produce.
MH: I feel the biggest movies in the country are actually the ones that families watch together. That is our single-point agenda for the Disney branded movies we produce – to make clean, beautiful, fun, family movies. Let’s take the example of a Barfi! or a Chennai Express. They were as close to being Disney movies as possible, in that they were enjoyed by the family as a unit. That’s the ethos we intend to take forward when we brand some of our movies ‘Disney’ in the future.
But we are still to make progress in technical competencies that Disney has in many fields. So I am looking forward to that. Basically, taking our movies to the next level, technically, where we can draw more and more from Disney’s expertise.