The Hindu Business Line : Show me the money!

Leading ladies in Bollywood usually make the tabloid front pages with their dangerous liaisons, seldom for their remuneration. It appears that that’s about to change, because a couple of weeks ago, Kareena Kapoor made it to the headlines not just for her current beau (Saif), or her former boy-friend (Shahid), but the fact that she’s inked a Rs 3.5 crore deal with a major production house.

It’s a figure that the male stars crossed a decade and more ago. Last year, Hrithik Roshan’s Rs 35-crore three-film contract with Adlabs was the highest any Hindi film star has been offered, and that too in advance, for his time and talent. But the A-list Bollywood men have routinely been playing in multiples of crore when it comes to payment: it’s not all to do with straight-up fees, it’s got to do with profits from territories they own for their movies, or from the overseas rights.

And then there are the massively lucrative endorsements, world tours, and appearances at celebrity dos, as well as the latest star accessory: a cricket team. As Shah Rukh famously said last week, when asked if his team needed more funds that he would make up the difference by dancing at a couple more weddings!

An after-thought

Female stars have traditionally been down the pecking order and talking about their fees was more an after-thought for a producer. If a sixty-plus Amitabh demanded and got Rs 5 crore for Black, a top-of-the-heap heroine like Rani Mukherji would have got one fourth, if that. When Mangal Pandey was in the process of being cast, it was clear that Ketan Mehta got financial backing for his movie only when Aamir Khan gave him the nod. Which he did for Rs 7 crore; Aishwarya Rai, who was being considered as his leading lady, walked out when she didn’t get her price. In an industry which waits for heroes to greenlight projects, leading ladies have to wait on tenterhooks to be pencilled in, and for that to happen, it depends largely in whose good books they are.

In the last decade, there’s been only one heroine who has had the might to open movies, and that was Kajol: one of her starrers, the 1999 Hum Aapke Dil Mein Rehte Hain, with a strong woman-oriented subject, had an excellent opening.

Her hero, Anil Kapoor, played a secondary role; she was the one who carried the film. But it was a brief period, and a one-off solo success: two years later, when she tried the same thing in Kuchh Khatti Kuchh Meethi, a rip-off of Hollywood-hit Parent Trap, the film tanked. No one wanted so much Kajol in two-and-a-half hours.

Second-fiddle phenomenon

Before Kajol, there were Madhuri and Sri Devi, but even they, despite the legions of their admirers, didn’t have movies which broke away from the mould: they were content to play second fiddle to their leading men. Compare this with the absolute sway male stars have had over the industry for decades. The three Khans have been around for more than 15 years, and show no signs of slowing down. Their fans can’t get enough: even now, given that we have some movement in terms of maturity of films and audiences, songs and sequences with female stars are an excuse for a cigarette break.

Akshay Kumar, who now rivals Shah Rukh in terms of sheer saleability (all his four films in 2007 were huge hits), is now asking for and getting paid in seven figures, and young heroines are his for the asking. It works well for the heroines too, because a hit film hikes up their ‘market’ too. Katrina Kaif, Akshay’s lucky mascot (she paired opposite him in two of 2007’s biggest hits, Namaste London and Welcome), has also reportedly just moved into the crore-plus brackets. Despite her not knowing too much Hindi (her voice has been dubbed in her movies), she has moved shrewdly ahead with the help of the man in her life, Salman Khan. It also doesn’t hurt that she is pretty and malleable, with adequate acting and dancing skills.

Having a top star’s backing is important for an ambitious starlet: ask Deepika Padukone, flush after her Om Shanti Om success, who is currently working with a whole clutch of top leading men, starting with Akshay Kumar in Nikhil Advani’s From Chandi Chowk to China. Having worked with Shah Rukh in her dream debut, she can safelyhope to work with other top stars; starring with B-list actors will not be in her gameplan at all. These ladies may still be signing projects only on a male star’s say-so, but the major difference now is that they have finally crashed the crore-plus barrier. Apart from Aishwarya and Preity, who have been in that bracket for some years, there’s Kareena Kapoor, Priyanka Chopra, Rani Mukherji, Bipasha Basu and, the newest entrant to have broken through to the crore club, Katrina Kaif.

More screen time

The other difference is also big, but will take time to spread. Leading ladies are now demanding, and getting, more screen time. Kareena’s role of a Punjabi motor-mouth lass in Jab We Met was a huge part of its success, and she had as much to do, if not more, than Shahid Kapoor. Madhur Bhandarkar’s film on the fashion industry, appropriately called Fashion, is helmed by Priyanka Chopra, the other big role being played by Kangana Ranaut. No one knows who the hero is, if indeed, there is one.

It may still be a long time that top female stars get the same amount (top sportswomen also have the same complaint). It may never even happen. But there’s no getting away from the fact that they are now confident of asking for much more. And that there are filmmakers out there who are bucking the trend by casting them in movies in which they do not always have to bring up the rear — in interesting, smartly-budgeted movies which have beauties-but-with-brains in the forefront.