After a disastrous 2015, the studio went back to the drawing board to realign its strategy and has been able to turn things around.
Three
years back, two major multi-national film studios -- Disney India and
Fox
Star Studios (FSS) -- found themselves in a super slump at the
Bollywood box office. Both had a bad run at the movies with films
like Bombay Velvet and Tamasha failing to make an impact, despite a
commendable cast and director. As a result, Disney India decided to
take a step back from Bollywood.
For
the second studio, FSS, 2015 was an exceptionally bad year with just
one of the seven releases making an impact at the box office.
However, instead of calling it quits, FSS decided to take a step
back, re-evaluate its strategy, and start anew. Three years on, the
new strategy seems to be paying off.
There
continue to be some hits and misses, but FSS has managed to churn out
commercially and critically successful films over the past couple of
years, including titles like Neerja, Kapoor and Sons, and, most
recently, Sanju.
Going
back to the drawing board, the studio realised that the focus needs
to shift from actors to characters, or in other words, from scale to
script. Thus came a renewed emphasis on story and working with
partners -- actors, directors or co-creators, who brought as much to
the table as FSS did. While the studio continues to have a
long-standing working relationship with Karan Johar's Dharma
Productions, it has also entered partnerships with Sajid Nadiadwala
and Rajkumar Hirani.
"We
had decided on two focus areas. The first was to do more home
productions where our creative teams are driving the entire process,
starting with the script. The other equally important agenda was to
scale up through strategic alliances with key creative production
houses who share our vision. These alliances include our longstanding
partnership with Dharma, which we are very proud of, our successful
association with Sajid Nadiadwala and, more recently, with Rajkumar
Hirani and Vidhu Vinod Chopra. It's important to work with partners
over several films to develop a shared agenda that maximises the
synergies for both parties," says Vijay Singh, CEO, Fox Star
Studios.
The
strategy of alliances seems to be working since some of the biggest
hits from FSS in recent years have come from the co-production slate
like Kapoor and Sons (Dharma), Baaghi 2 (Sajid Nadiadwala) and, most
recently, Sanju (Hirani and Chopra). FSS' home productions like
Neerja and MS Dhoni have also managed to hit the bullseye.
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