In the trade circles, directors are often spoken about as key drivers of a film’s box office business. However, when you ask the consumers, the primary drivers that emerge are starcast, songs, theme/ genre and promo execution. These are the four things that influence the audience the most to watch a new film in a theatre on the first weekend. Thereafter, the word-of-mouth anyway takes over and the film carves its own future, based on its content.
But does the director play a role at all, even though it may be a secondary role? To answer this, we conducted a 16-city large sample Director’s Equity Survey (DES) in Jan-Feb 2012. Cine goers were asked questions about 45 Bollywood directors. The criterion for selection of the 45 was their perceived familiarity. However, we may have missed out on some names. Please share feedback and we will cover them in the update in March.
For each director, three questions were asked:
Q1: Awareness – Have you heard of the name XYZ? The Awareness scores in the table below reflect the % respondents who knew the person by name.
Q2: Knowledge – Which films has XYZ directed? Only those who were aware of the person were asked this question. The principal behind this question is that while you may have heard of a director’s name, it does not translate into any equity till you can name at least one film directed by him/ her. Knowledge score is defined as the % respondents who could name at least one film by the director. Expectedly, directors who have made only 1-2 films (e.g. Zoya Akhtar) and those who haven’t been very active of late (e.g. Yash Chopra and Vidhu Vinod Chopra) will be at a disadvantage on this parameter.
Q3: Appeal – If a new film directed by XYZ is releasing, will you watch that film in a theatre, purely because of the director? Only those who could name at least one film directed by the person were asked this question. The Appeal scores in the table below reflect the % respondents for whom the director was strong enough to get them to the theatre, irrespective of starcast, promos, genre or songs.
The final Equity score was calculated as a combination of these three factors. Let’s look at an example to understand the calculations better. 98% respondents were aware of Farah Khan (Q1). So her Awareness score is 98%. These were asked to name films directed by her (Q2). 51% of the 98% could name at least one of her three films – Main Hoon Naa, Om Shanti Om or Tees Maar Khan. Hence, her Knowledge score is 51%. These were asked if they will go to a theatre to watch a new film because Farah Khan has directed it (Q3). 35% agreed, which is her Appeal score. Her overall Equity score is 35% of 51% of 98% = 17%. That is, 17% of cine-goers knew Farah Khan, could name one of her films, and agreed that she was a “driver” enough for them to visit a theatre to watch a film directed by her.
I’ll let the table below tell its own story. The top three are separated from the rest by a wide margin. Most directors are below 15% Equity. But that is no shame. It is important to clarify that none of this data is about a director’s content delivery abilities. It is about their brand equity to create audience pull. In a star-driven country, we never expected more than a dozen to have any significant impact anyway. And this research proves the same in a structured, scientific manner.
Happy table reading!
| Director | Awareness | Knowledge | Appeal | Equity |
| Rakesh Roshan | 94 | 83 | 58 | 45 |
| Rohit Shetty | 96 | 88 | 52 | 44 |
| Karan Johar | 100 | 77 | 56 | 43 |
| Rajkumar Hirani | 77 | 80 | 53 | 33 |
| Sanjay Leela Bhansali | 96 | 73 | 44 | 30 |
| Madhur Bhandarkar | 93 | 65 | 50 | 30 |
| Farhan Akhtar | 98 | 51 | 57 | 29 |
| David Dhawan | 90 | 63 | 46 | 26 |
| Aamir Khan | 99 | 41 | 62 | 25 |
| Priyadarshan | 89 | 60 | 47 | 25 |
| Imtiaz Ali | 76 | 67 | 42 | 22 |
| Prakash Jha | 94 | 65 | 31 | 19 |
| Ashutosh Gowariker | 81 | 66 | 35 | 19 |
| Subhash Ghai | 89 | 48 | 43 | 18 |
| Farah Khan | 98 | 51 | 35 | 17 |
| Sajid Khan | 87 | 46 | 38 | 15 |
| Abbas-Mustan | 79 | 39 | 40 | 12 |
| Mani Ratnam | 83 | 61 | 23 | 12 |
| Vishal Bharadwaj | 81 | 41 | 32 | 11 |
| Zoya Akhtar | 80 | 42 | 30 | 10 |
| Yash Chopra | 99 | 14 | 69 | 10 |
| Sooraj Barjatya | 47 | 51 | 40 | 10 |
| Vikram Bhatt | 89 | 37 | 26 | 9 |
| Ramesh Sippy | 60 | 30 | 47 | 8 |
| Aditya Chopra | 94 | 15 | 58 | 8 |
| Pankaj Kapur | 77 | 36 | 26 | 7 |
| Rakesh Omprakash Mehra | 49 | 25 | 54 | 6 |
| Kiran Rao | 68 | 39 | 20 | 5 |
| Vipul Shah | 77 | 19 | 33 | 5 |
| Ram Gopal Varma | 80 | 81 | 7 | 5 |
| Mahesh Bhatt | 95 | 11 | 35 | 4 |
| Amole Gupte | 24 | 45 | 29 | 3 |
| Nikhil Advani | 39 | 25 | 29 | 3 |
| Kunal Kohli | 64 | 17 | 25 | 3 |
| Anurag Kashyap | 74 | 14 | 24 | 2 |
| Vidhu Vinod Chopra | 59 | 5 | 67 | 2 |
| Maneesh Sharma | 22 | 17 | 50 | 2 |
| Milan Luthria | 23 | 38 | 22 | 2 |
| Anubhav Sinha | 44 | 14 | 24 | 1 |
| Indra Kumar | 13 | 32 | 33 | 1 |
| Rohan Sippy | 55 | 19 | 13 | 1 |
| Abhinav Kashyap | 58 | 15 | 14 | 1 |
| Mohit Suri | 53 | 10 | 17 | 1 |
| Anurag Basu | 68 | 3 | 25 | 1 |
| Shirish Kunder | 31 | 12 | 14 | 1 |
| Anees Bazmee | 25 | 31 | 6 | 0 |
The Question is Can you put this one into a BO prediction model. Does it emerge significant, compared to say putting Director power as most models put it which is either based on recent awards or recent BO performance!
Just like Yash Chopra,..Rakesh Roshan rarely Directs so How come he is that much popular??
The one word answer to that is – Krrish
Or That he is Hrithik Roshan’s Dad.
It has been noticed that the CPIO and FAA in rpsceet of IP Offices India, they have been acting shaky and feeling uncomfortable in divulging the information asked for by the RTI applicants. May be this is the position in other departments as well and this department may not be the only department doing so. Since we deal with this department, we know it and point out. However, I had occasion in dealing with the Food Processing department who were too willing to co-operate in every rpsceet. Even to the extent that when I asked for some information, they gave me which prompted the supplementary information to be asked for. On visit to the office (and that too not be me, the applicant but the court clerk), the office people willingly shown the register itself and satisfied the court clerk, considering that the information required would be given in any case if the further application under RTI Act is filed which would have wasted the time and money on the part of the department. It might have taken less than five minutes from the time calculated to find the register, open up the page and making the position understand to the court clerk to his satisfaction. Contd/…
Hmmm quite surprised by the results. Have a question. Did u provide the list of directors ?
Were directors like Shimit Amin, and Aryan Mukerjee excluded ?? I would hope Shimit ranks higher than Mr Farah Khan 🙂
Yes, we provided the list. Some more directors, including the ones mentioned by you, will be covered in the next round.
Despite giving two commercial hits, Heyy Baby & Housefull, why Sajid Khan is not included when the likes of Kiran Rao make a place in the list?
Will include him and update the list in March.
Sajid Khan is in the list. Unless I am reading too much between the lines..
I feel that the survey would definitely be biased towards recent filmmakers who have made successful movies in recent past. That explains for Yash Chopra getting so low score on the 2nd parameter.
Also, whenever a successful director comes up with his new movie, the trailer goes on to say “From the director of ..”. In this case, movies with directors like Aditya Chopra or maybe an Abhinav Kashyap would stand a good chance of enjoying a good opening.
Having said that, sadly role of director’s equity in the overall valuation of a movie is quite low in India. A salman khan movie today stands to earn more than 50cr irrespective of the director and a solo Abhishek Bachan or Amitabh Bachchan movie stands to loose irrespective of the director.
PS: Have you done any research to find out the role of “First Look” in the success of a movie though.
Agree with you on all points.
First look – Cinematix captures film’s reach and appeal when the first look comes out. It’s totally a function of the first look as well as how much it is promoted. Can’t generalize it across films.
Anees Bazmee- 0%. Haha, I hereby forgive all those who buyed that Singh Is Kinng ticket to make it a blockbuster. #Win
Hahaha!
Huhu! Kiran Rao ahead of Anurag Kashyap?? Only in your “survey”! 😀 And Rajkumar Hirani ranking lower than Rohit Shetty or Rakesh Roshan?? The man behind Munnabhai films & 3 Idiots?? Really? What a “survey”!
I’m amazed that someone like Anubhav SInha gets a “knowledge” of 14 when he has directed probably the most marketed film in the history of India cinema, though now I come to think of it, not many of my friends knew who had directed RA. One, if I remember it was more like Shahrukh Khans RA. One, an entirely SRK driven affair.
What was the sample set of your survey ?
Also unlike the star or a song, director has a 0 face value but incredible value in terms of intangible “entertainment” factor. So asking audience if they know a director and then terming that as Director Equity Value is probably a flawed survey. Maybe you can tell them previous films of the director and then judge likability.
I dunno but you belittle iit, iim credentials by half-baked stuff like these.
Thanks for being critical, but no thanks for being personal.
The survey is about trying to understand if certain directors have the ability to pull audiences to the theatres purely on their names. Intangible value is a director’s strength, but not the equity of the director’s brand. Read again and you should know what we were trying to achieve through this research.
Govt blindly iudrotnced RTI Act but failed to recruit officers to handle RTI applications. Nowadays govt officers esp of IPO’s are already working in a de-motivating environment where there is heavy workloads without any promotions, incentives etc.Inspite of this situation few officers are more generous enough to take added responsibilty and workload of RTI applications. Unfortunately, when some undecissive situation comes in, concerned officer need to fight with legal system or end up with monetary fine instead of getting incentives for handling added workload of RTI applications. I pitty them.
Anees Bazmee’s scores surprised me.
when your list has sajid khan above yash chopra,sooraj barjatiya,etc we know something is wrong abt this survey..
i mean your last question, i dont think any1 will watch sajid khan movie only if he is directing minus the stars..
Shailesh ji, I understand what the aim of this survey was, however I don’t think this could show whether a director needs a film with popular actors or not. Or how the director could contribute to the BO collections. I don’t think Rakesh Roshan would be as succesful as KJO or Yash/Adi Chopra when directing a ‘star’less film. Or maybe I am mad.
If actor is director like Aamir Khan, then it would be very difficult calculate percentage of Awareness and Knowledge. Because while deciding awareness, it is likely that respondent may have known him as actor rather than director. On the other hand while deciding knowledge, it could be possible than respondent could not remember his films as director because there are so many of them in which he is acted.