Marketing A Director’s Vision

“I am a director’s actor” says the star of any upcoming film in a junket interview. What he means to say is that he follows the director’s vision and heeds to his directions with utmost sincerity (or he might not have his own ideas when it comes to the art of acting!) But if there is a scope for following a director’s vision, is it just limited to his actors and can it be extended to the audience? In other words, can a director’s vision be marketed?
Superstar culture in films is followed everywhere around the world and is not limited only in India. Yes, even Hollywood is quite insular when it comes to protecting their renowned actors. And this culture is the most important determinant on which the film marketing thrives. So where does this leave the captain of the ship? The director. Films by Scorsese, Spielberg and in the last few years Nolan are marketed as director’s film. ‘A Christopher Nolan Film’ is sure to garner lot of attention but would his films have registered the same box office numbers with a neophyte. Can a movie like Inception be imagined without DiCaprio and become the same global blockbuster? The jury’s out there and opinions will be varied depending on which side of the fan base you belong to.
An interesting case study will be looking at Martin Scorsese’s filmography. His 2011 release, Hugo, received wide critical acclaim but was a notable flop. One of the main reasons cited were lack of renowned actors. ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ release in 2013 got Scorsese back into the limelight thanks to DiCaprio’s stellar performance being loved by the audience even though the critical acclaim was absent. Again in 2016, his last release ‘Silence’ was one of the lowest openings his films ever got. Reasons cited: No marketing buzz (and also the content!)
This is not to say that films with star directors along with star actors in the lead will always be a hit. Finally content does play a huge role and the audience is quite intelligent to differentiate the good from the bad. But the job becomes easier where marketing the product is concerned. It becomes an easier path to at least get a good opening, something which the producers always look forward to. Even if the movie doesn’t work, the star attraction pulls the weight of expectations and gives the film a decent deal at the box office. A fresh example — Kabir Khan’s Tubelight, for all the negative criticism, has still fetched close to 100 crores just on the sheer star power of Salman Khan.
But is 100 crores still the number to chase after Baahubali’s success? Its dubbed Hindi version became the highest grosser in the history of Hindi cinema. Prabhas, the main lead, was never known to the Hindi-film watching audience. Tamannah, the lead actress in the first film, has had all her Hindi films flop till date. The support cast was largely unfamiliar too. So what worked? The amazing grandeur projected by SS Rajamouli’s visionary opulence combined with a local flavored content was just the right combination to take the masses for an entertaining ride. And this is exactly what the promotions offered. To sell a film to an audience which doesn’t have the local actors (in this case the Hindi film actors) and that too dubbed, it would have only been possible to garner that attention by selling the director’s vision. The audience lapped it up and gave a direction to our filmmakers that their understanding about Indian cinema and its audience might just be wrong.
Is Baahubali a game changer? Time will tell. Will director’s vision dominate the marketing? Hope so. Till then the superstars are there to bail them out.

