Are movie stars demanding bulk of a film’s budget? Bollywood agent asks what the problem is, cites example of Pritam: ‘He would’ve been Taylor Swift…’

After chatting about various aspects of the film and streaming business, the conversation turned to the ‘elephant in the room’, which is the two or three top stars claiming up to 50% of a film’s budget. Asked how he manages ‘egos’, Vijay said, “This is the long-standing debate, and it’s a great conversation to call out the elephant in the room. Everybody is here to make a living… My business is pretty much the same. It is a marketplace of a buyer and a seller. The simple answer to that is, what really are the economics that make it work. So, if you don’t want to pay on the front-end, what are the economics of the back-end.”

He continued, “There’s a lot that goes into play, but is there room for corrections? Yes.” He asked, “Why is wrong for a celebrity to make money? Why is it an issue? If you are saying event films work, please give us the event films, as producers and makers of content. If you are saying that star films work, please pay the star because of whom the film is working. You can’t put us in an either-or situation, where neither do we know what’s happening on the backend. I don’t know how do I calculate music royalties for my music composer. I represent Pritam da, and I don’t think India can celebrate today without his music… Technically, if music royalties flowed in the way they did, he would be Taylor Swift, on a $10 billion tour.”

Citing the example of how things work on an e-commerce platform like Flipkart, where discounts are offered on products that aren’t selling, he added, “Why are the rules of the marketplace different here? Because someone is famous? I don’t think it’s fair. It’s an unfair argument, because the easiest thing to do is to bell the loudest cat. Yes, it could be that one or two people are spoiling the economics at scale, by and large, but that isn’t the rule.” He said that all businesess would ‘come to nothing’ if creators aren’t compensated fairly.