There are accusations of inflated box office figures lately, due to block booking. The terms ‘Block booking’ and ‘corporate booking’ are doing the rounds these days. Several movie makers are being accused, with industry experts calling it a ‘misrepresentation of demand’.
Akshay Kumar and Veer Pahariya’s last month release Skyforce’s makers were accused of booking theatres to paint a rosy picture in the film’s box office report by trade analyst Komal Nahata. The same accusation is pointed out on Vicky Kaushal and Rashmika Mandana starrer Chhava ahead of its release. Notably, it is also produced by Maddock films. With these kind of allegations surfacing, the industry experts are worried about the ‘industry’s credibility’. If the makers are engaged in block booking, this means now anyone can manufacture numbers with money in order to favor their films.
Not a first
To those unaware, this is not the first time, first case of Block booking. It is prevalent in Bollywood since 1970s-80s. Big names from the industry have been involved in this since long. In those days, block booking was called ‘feeding’. Some top actors used to buy tickets of their movies at certain specific cinemas for houseful, intending to create a ‘kind of perception’.
The term began actively spoken in 2023 when several Bollywood movies became massive success, breaking records at the box office. This began the discussion of how the makers practiced corporate bookings and self-purchases to inflate their earnings. The exhibitors never complain about it, because they just want the tickets to be sold somehow. And this is technically ‘selling’, whoever buys the ticket; the producer, the actor or the studio. Corporate booking has always existed, and the new phenomenon of ‘self-buying’ has also emerged.
Until last year, Alia Bhatt’s Jigra was also accused of the same. Alia Bhatt and Divya Khosla Kumar were also engaged in a public spat around this. Then this year with Ram Charan and Kiara Advani’s Game Changer, where the makers claimed that the movie earned 186 crores on the premiere day. Which was actually 80 crore, according to Sacnilk and Box Office India.
Block and corporate booking
Corporate booking typically involves agreements between lead actors, producers and the associated brands. Basically, the star of the film requests the corporate brand that he endorses to arrange for bulk bookings for his film. For example, if an actor endorses 15 brands, he goes to one of them asking to purchase a particular number of tickets, per say 10,000. Or, he might ask all of them to buy a portion of tickets. The companies acquire the tickets and distribute among their employees or give them as contest prizes to the consumers.
In return to this, the amount used to buy the tickets is deducted from the actor’s fees, or he himself might waive off some of his agreed fees or if possible shoot an ad for free. Now what happens is, in a legitimized sense those 10,000 tickets are being sold. Even if in cinemas there are vacant seats.
Now comes, the self-booking or block booking. It differs to corporate booking as in block booking the individuals themselves use personal funds, bearing the expense so as to inflate the box-office earnings. This doesn’t involve any brands in between. Here, the actor, the producers or the studio pay the cost for multiple seats from their pockets.
What happens after this is it appears to the consumers that the seats are booked, or are filling out fast. In some cases, the tickets are purchased and distributed among educational institutions. The students of schools and colleges are approached to watch the movies, trying to show some kind of ‘authenticity’.
Shibasish Sarkar, the president of the Producers Guild of India stated that this is a fraud against masses. He said, “I think ultimately what is happening is bringing the credibility of the industry down. The only logic here is to create a perception about the demand.”
If all this is true, then basically the consumers are being scammed by the movie makers. When we boast about the numbers of our favorite movies, it is actually us as consumers who are being bluffed. While in reality, they are simply creating a positive perception about their films and keep us in the blind eye. Markets worldwide track numbers, but there is no system here in India to bust fake numbers. That might take time. Now you might not think the same about a movie’s earnings…