Each of the five men who dominate the business in Bollywood functions almost as a one-person studio. Anupama Chopra in International Herald Tribune:
Shahrukh Khan with his wax statue
MUMBAI: ‘Who gives us clout?” Shahrukh Khan, the actor also known as King of Bollywood, asked during a recent interview here. He quickly answered the query himself. “It’s the last mile, the audience. My logic is this: Can you beat me at the box office?”
In the last 15 years few have challenged Khan at the top of the Bollywood box office. His string of blockbusters has given him such clout – as well as wax statues in his honor at Madame Tussauds in London and the Musée Grévin in Paris – that India Today, one of the country’s leading newsmagazines, placed the 42-year-old Khan at No.6 in its annual power list in February. He may have ranked below the billionaire Ambani brothers, but he came in ahead of the former president A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. And it was no accident that the most powerful man in the Hindi film industry is an actor. In Bollywood the motion picture industry remains resolutely star struck, even as special effects have helped to reduce Hollywood’s dependence on big-name actors.
“There is a variety of ways in which a picture gets made in Hollywood, but I can say without qualification that in Hindi pictures stars are the determining factor much more than they are in Los Angeles,” said Michael Lynton, the chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment, which helped produce “Saawariya” (Beloved), the first Hollywood-Bollywood studio collaboration.
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