All In The Family!

Siddharth Roy Kapur (SRK): <g data-gr-id="184">ABCD as you know</g> was a hugely entertaining and successful family film and since we were actively working on developing family entertainers under the Disney brand, the sequel to ABCD seemed like a perfect fit. As a brand, Disney has always stood for films that the whole family can watch and enjoy together and what’s more, ABCD 2 in true Disney tradition was a film that was capable of becoming not just <g data-gr-id="194">sequelable</g>, but a strong homegrown franchise as well. As part of our franchise building for ABCD, we will be launching a dance-based scripted reality show called <g data-gr-id="195">Naach</g> inspired by the theme of the movie on our youth channel Bindass, we have launched the ABCD 2 mobile game on multiple app stores, and we have launched a very cool range of merchandise. All this, so that the ABCD brand lives on for its fans across multiple touch points till we bring them the next instalment of the movie.

SRK: You are absolutely right as that has been the popular perception till now. In the past, Disney branded local films have had kids as the entry point. But on Friday, we define the brand as one that brings great entertainment to the whole family. When you look at the Disney Channel on Friday, it has transitioned successfully into a family channel from <g data-gr-id="163">a kids</g> channel. The content and the promos of the channel are centred around families, and we actively want parents to watch the channel along with their kids.

We made a strong start with Khoobsurat last year, which was a quintessential Disney film and was very popular with teenagers and young adults. And now with ABCD 2 we have seen hordes of kids going to watch the film together in their school uniforms on the first weekend when Mumbai was rained out and schools were shut. We couldn’t have asked for a better validation of our strategy to brand the <g data-gr-id="191">film</g> Disney. When you look at the films we have lined up under the Disney brand in 2016, from Jagga Jasoos with Anurag (Basu) and Ranbir (Kapoor) to Mohenjo Daro with Ashutosh (Gowariker) and Hrithik (Roshan) to <g data-gr-id="185">Dangal</g> with Nitesh (Tiwari) and Aamir (Khan), you will see that we are tapping into entertaining and uplifting stories from many different genres, with great talent backing up each of these movies. Jagga Jasoos is an all-out musical entertainer about a young detective, Mohenjo Daro is an epic action drama in a period setting film and <g data-gr-id="186">Dangal</g> is a sports action drama with strong emotions and an important message.

SRK: It is a quintessential family entertainer and will appeal to audiences from 6 to 60. For that matter, even Barfi! could have been a <g data-gr-id="172">Disney branded</g> film. <g data-gr-id="173">Dangal</g> is the emotional story of a father and his two daughters. One would not have thought given the perception of the brand in the past, that it could be a <g data-gr-id="174">Disney branded</g> <g data-gr-id="179">film</g> but that is how we are defining Disney on Friday. As long as a movie can be watched and enjoyed by the entire family, and it entertains and engages them, it can be branded Disney. At the end of the day, it will be the range and depth of the content that we put out that defines the brand rather than shouting from the rooftops about what we want the brand to stand for. I think as our films keep releasing, people will realise, ‘Oh, even this has come from Disney!’ I think that’s when they will realise that we are talking to the entire family and not just kids.

SRK: Of course we <g data-gr-id="171">would,</g> but under the UTV brand. Last year, from Haider to Filmistaan to PK, Kick and 2 States, all these movies were UTV branded. Between August and November this year, we have Phantom, Katti Batti and Tamasha, which are under the UTV Motion Pictures label. Next year, <g data-gr-id="165">Fitoor</g> and Baaghi are both UTV films. So we are now making movies under two banners – Disney and UTV. The family entertainers will be under the Disney banner and all our other productions will be UTV branded. The efforts of our creative team right now are focused on finding and developing Disney branded family <g data-gr-id="169">entertainers,</g> because the UTV branded movies come naturally to us anyway.

SRK: If doing six to eight films a year is ‘going slow’, then I am happy to! The fact is that we are making bigger films and bigger bets. Whether it is Dangal or <g data-gr-id="188">Mohenjo Daro</g> or Jagga Jasoos or <g data-gr-id="187">Fitoor</g>, these are all big-ticket films that are all releasing next year and deserve our undivided attention and focus, both creatively and in marketing and distribution. Later this year, we have three films releasing within four months, <g data-gr-id="167">Phantom,Katti</g> Batti and Tamasha. When you are making big bets you want to make fewer films, but the right ones. Also we have some huge Hollywood tentpoles this year from Avengers to <g data-gr-id="189">Ant Man</g> to Star Wars, not to mention other really special titles like Cinderella and Inside Out, which we have already released.

SRK: We really want to focus on creatively developing our movies from inception. So our focus and attention going forward, as it always has been, will be to work closely with talented writers and directors to develop scripts that we are excited about taking ahead, rather than on pure play distribution deals.

SRK: We are definitely looking at those and working through our entire library to figure out which of them are the most adaptable to an Indian cultural sensibility. There are actually a few of those films in development with us right now. There is a treasure trove of great stories in the Disney library and we would be silly not to use this resource.

SRK: The team functions exactly as it did on the ground, but of course it now benefits tremendously from certain best-practices in creative development, marketing and distribution that have been built and honed at Disney over its more than 90 years of being a studio. There were things we got right and mistakes we all made, which of course helped us learn and evolve. But there was no established institutional learning in place that we could fall back on, it was all learning on the job. That’s also great in its own way, because it builds invaluable experience and character. But at this stage in our evolution as a studio, for our team to be able to absorb learnings from how they do things over at Marvel, Pixar, Disney and Lucas Films, is simply invaluable. 

SRK: Jagga Jasoos is another such franchise opportunity for us. We are coming back together after Barfi! with Anurag, Pritam and Ranbir and now Katrina Kaif has joined us too, in a film that has such a universal theme. Kids and families are going to love the film, and the music is going to be quite incredible. It provides us with huge opportunities to build Jagga Jasoos as a franchise across television, consumer products, mobile gaming and so many other avenues. We are really excited about the possibilities.

SRK: We have a strong creative unit, with our two creative heads Suvonkar Banerjee and Sameer Rao leading their respective teams on developing a slate of productions. Our creative team is always in active development on multiple projects, so that we can have a large array of material to sift through to determine what we want to take forward into screenplays and finally into production. That has always been the creative culture at UTV and now continues at Disney India. Dangal is a great example of what we do in our creative team, which is basically taking up an idea right from its inception, developing the story, bringing on the writing and directing talent, actively working with them on a screenplay and finally, presenting it to someone of the caliber of Aamir, who loved the screenplay we had developed and came on board to do the movie!

SRK: I am hoping we never become like that and I don’t think we ever will, because we are actively aware of the pitfalls of too much process orientation and on maintaining the right balance between instinct and analysis. Our values, our core is that we love the movies, and we will always be looking out for the next gem we can back. Inherent in most of our team members is a great love for cinema and the hunger to find the next great idea that can be developed into a movie.

SRK: It is exactly as it used to be. If you know someone here, you get an introduction through them, if not then drop a mail to the studio account, call on the landline. You will always get through to someone. It’s as simple as that. There is obviously a lot of material that comes in and we have to sift through it and not everyone will get an opportunity to meet us face-to-face. But if it’s something we want to take forward, we will always get back in touch with you.

SRK: We have a strong team with the right core values and creative instincts in place, that we have built over more than a decade. There has been a lot of institutional learning steadily built over time, that we have made sure to retain as our learning lessons for the future. We keep reminding ourselves about past decisions – good ones and bad ones – and that has helped us not make some of the same ones in the future, only new ones! (laughs) But seriously, at the end of the day in this business, there are no right or wrong answers. There are certain things you learn and imbibe, both creatively and commercially, that then inform your instincts and become part of your professional DNA. As you said earlier, if you see our track record over the last few years, we made many more right calls than wrong ones, and while it is easy to put it down to chance, I think it has been a result of a decade of learning and imbibing and honing our instincts – from our friends and colleagues in the industry and from our own successes and failures.

SRK: If you are able to come across as authentic – I am deliberately not saying ‘sincere’, ‘transparent’, ‘honest’ as those qualities should be a given – then you can build lasting professional relationships in this business. It means that not just are you a pleasure to deal with but you are also not afraid of having blunt and frank conversations, in the interest of the movie you are working on together. Everyone here is working towards the common goal of making a great movie which does really well commercially, and if they realise over time they are going to get value from an interaction with you that will help their movie, and not just bland amiability, that is the most important thing. If you keep saying yes to everything, you will be looked at as someone who doesn’t have an opinion and is in client servicing mode, and if you keep saying no to everything, you will be treated as a corporate suit who doesn’t understand the art of film-making. You have to strike the right balance and that will earn you the trust and respect of your colleagues.

SRK: As far as the industry is concerned, we speak to each other much more on industry issues and are able to represent ourselves much better to the government and the bureaucracy. I think things have become much more transparent and streamlined within the production model as well and that makes the industry that much more credible.

Among the things we really have to focus on improving is the cost-efficiency of films, which has been a <g data-gr-id="215">long standing</g> problem. It’s something we have been saying in interviews for years, but unfortunately it bears repeating. There’s also no doubt that the quality and range of our commercial cinema has improved, but when you look at the polarisation —and you guys know this better because in your last editorial you referred — it is clear that the successful films are nowadays doing even better in success that in the past, while unsuccessful films are tanking without a trace on Friday itself. 

Audiences have become so discerning that they will only come out to watch a movie that they have heard great things about and one that they are assured they will have a good time watching. They have no patience at all with mediocre fare and will just not give it a chance.