Chennai
Tom Cruise was paid $28 million (including bonus payment) for his latest film Mission: Impossible-Fallout, made on a budget of $178 million, translating to 16% of the total budget. Will Smith was paid $20 million of the $100 million budget (20%) for Netflix’s original film Bright. Mark Wahlberg was paid $17 million for Transformers: The Last Knight, made on a budget of $217 million-a mere 8 per cent. Analysis of the top artistes and their salaries in Hollywood indicates the range to be from 8 to a maximum of 20 per cent of the film’s budget. Top director Christopher Nolan received $20 million (13 per cent of the film budget) as salary for Dunkirk that was made on a budget of $150 million and earned over $500 million. He earned a bonus of 20% of gross additionally.
These salaries are 50 to 60 per cent paid upfront (means fixed salaries) and balance is earned through bonuses based on box office earning of these films. Hollywood is clear that the salary of top stars and directors cannot be more than 20 per cent each of the budget. In Kollywood, the minimum percentage demanded as salary by most top stars is 20 per cent of the budget, and goes up to 50 to 60 per cent. Even the not-so-saleable actors demanding a minimum of 10 to 15 per cent of the budget as salary is the biggest challenge the industry is facing now. All these salaries are fixed and must be paid by producers, irrespective of whether the film performs or not at the box office. This demand of unreasonable share of the film budget as salary puts producers under severe financial pressure, leading to escalation of cost and consequently, losses. Part of the blame should also be on producers, who in order to get the dates of top stars, go to any extent and hike salaries that ends up becoming a benchmark. Hence, popular actors are being paid over Rs 8 crore for a Rs 25-30 crore film (35 per cent) or Rs 12 crore for a film made on a Rs 32-35 crore (35 per cent) budget.
This scenario, however, does not exist in Bollywood or Tollywood, which are comparatively bigger film industries. In Bollywood, actors whose films earn over Rs 100 crore do not get more than Rs 15-20 crore. Actors whose films earn more than Rs 200 crore are paid in the range of Rs 40-50 crore, which is still 20 to 25 per cent. In Telugu cinema, the top five actors (Mahesh Babu, Prabhas, Jr NTR, Ram Charan and Allu Arjun) are paid in the range of Rs 15-25 crore though their films are made on a budget of Rs 60-100 crore.
Tamil cinema needs to rationalise the salaries of top actors and directors and offer it like Hollywood, where 60 per cent of the salary is paid as fixed and the balance 40 per cent is linked to box office performance of their film. The salary paid to top artistes should be in the range of 15 to 25 per cent and top filmmakers must be paid in the range of 10 to 15 per cent of the film’s budget so that the films are commercially viable. Hollywood and Bollywood do not link bonus payment to other earnings but only to box office as there is transparency there.
To achieve this method of salary payment, the box office earning of Kollywood must be computerised and published officially so that there is transparency on the film’s earnings as in Hollywood and Bollywood, and all saleable actors and directors would have trust in producers, which is largely lacking today. When computerisation and official publication of box office collection is achieved, the fixed salary (60 per cent of total salary) and bonus (40 per cent) based on box office earnings must be implemented so that there is accountability among actors and directors for the performance of a film at the box office, thus reducing the overall cost to the producer. It will be a golden period when such a method becomes operational in Kollywood. Let us hope such a period ushers in soon.
—G Dhananjayan is a film producer, distributor and founder-director of BOFTA Film Institute
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