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Filmmaker Sanjay Gupta revealed insider information about Bollywood’s escalating entourage costs problem, and said that certain stars these days demand as many as six vanity vans, which come with their own separate staff. He said that producers are slapped with hefty bills by these actors, although certain ‘old-school’ folks such as Amitabh Bachchan pay for their own staff to this day. Sanjay said that he knows about a Bollywood star who had signed a South Indian movie, shown up on set to shoot, but was quietly fired after the producer discovered that he would be hit with massive hidden costs due to the star’s entourage demands.
He didn’t take any names, but he revealed in an appearance on Cyrus Broacha’s podcast, “I’ll tell you something very funny. This particular actor signed a film down south. He went for the shoot, and they went to the location, which is a studio. And suddenly, the producer finds that there are these six vans from Bombay, and he’s like, ‘Boss, I didn’t hire six actors’. See, to a certain level, you indulge. Fine. But then he was told, ‘Yeh saab ka vans hai, aur yeh raato raat Bombay se aaya hai, aapka ek din bach gaya (These are sir’s vans, and they’ve been brought in overnight from Mumbai, so you saved a day).”
The producer, Sanjay said, was left furious. “He wanted to give every gaali. They packed up that day, and they told the actor, ‘Sir, next three days there is a problem with the location; you return to Mumbai and we’ll tell you when to come back’. The minute that actor got on the flight, he called all the drivers and said ‘f**k off’. They scrapped the film! The producer scrapped the film. He said, ‘We don’t do this. Inform us. Ask us. You can’t just bring six vans and send a bill of Rs 18 lakh’.”
Sanjay, who has worked with the likes of Amitabh Bachchan, Sanjay Dutt, Hrithik Roshan, Suniel Shetty, and many more, said that there are still some stars who have small teams. But this isn’t the case with younger stars, he said. “I know certain actors who have six makeup vans. It’s mandatory. The first van is his personal space. This is real; I’m very serious,” he said. Sanjay Gupta is best known for having directed the films Zinda, Kaante, Shootout at Wadala, and most recently, Mumbai Saga. Previously, in an Indian Express report, a screenwriter expressed their shock about learning that a female actor’s per-day entourage cost amounted to Rs 16 lakh.
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