The sensational sisters of Baipan Bhari Deva have swept the Marathi box office, giving a massive boost to a film industry long dismissed as Bollywood’s poor cousin. Kedar Shinde’s comedy-laced drama, about a sextet of squabbling siblings who come together for a cultural ceremony, has posted record numbers since its June 30 release – nearly Rs 59 crore as of July 20, against a production cost of roughly Rs five crore.
Distributed by Jio Studios, Baipan Bhari Deva is especially unusual given its woman-centric themes and unfashionably older, double-chinned cast, ranging from 68-year-old Rohini Hattangadi to 48-year-old Deepa Parab Chaudhari. These very factors, along with the movie’s credibly feel-good treatment and peppy songs, have contributed to its golden run.
“While we were very confident about the content of Baipan Bhari Deva, its nuances and performances, the film has surpassed expectations,” Nikhil Sane, Head, Marathi Content, Jio Studios, told Scroll. “It has created a phenomenon that you usually expect out of a big-ticket release like Pathaan or a South Indian dubbed film.”
The movie has appealed to audiences beyond the usual catchment areas of Mumbai, Thane and Pune, he added: “It has become a pan-Maharashtra film and has done well internationally too.”
Three weeks since it was released, Baipan Bhari Deva is continuing to hold strong in cinemas. Its earnings thus far might pale in comparison to Hindi titles, but are very good for a Marathi film. Yet, given recent trends in Marathi cinema, the elation that has greeted Baipan Bhari Deva’s spectacular streak has been tinged with caution.
Marathi cinema’s successes last year include Pravin Tarde’s political screed Dharmaveer and Ritiesh Deshmukh’s romance Ved. (At Rs 70-odd crore, Ved is the second-most lucrative Marathi film after Nagraj Manjule’s Rs 100-crore plus earner Sairat). A host of historicals set during the reign of the Maratha ruler Shivaji has also been profitable.
Among the hits over the past two decades have been Natrang (2009), Duniyadari (2013), Timepass (2014), Katyar Kalijat Ghusali (2015), Lai Bhaari (2016), Natasamrat (2016), Naal (2018) and Pawankhind (2022).
Marathi cinema turns to its advantage factors that are considered disadvantages in the Hindi film industry – the lack of a star system and modest budgets that equal the funds allotted to the average Hindi movie’s publicity machine. It emphasises storytelling over razzmatazz.
Yet, some of these factors hold back Marathi cinema from scaling commercial heights. While Baipan Bhari Deva is hugely encouraging, a single title cannot be counted upon to lift the entire industry, pointed out Aditya Sarpotdar, the director of Faster Fene (2017) and Zombivli (2022).
“Having one or two films work in a year isn’t a sign of consistency,” Sarpotdar said. “The business in Marathi is either under Rs five crore or Rs 50 crore – nothing in between. There will be one or two 50-crore films in a year and many more five-crore films. What we need is more 10-crore films that will get converted into 15-crore films.”
There have been years filled with hits and then fallow periods. “The picture isn’t heartening on the whole,” said Nikhil Majahan, the director of Pune-52 (2013) and Godavari (2021). “The hit-and-miss ratio is skewed in favour of the misses.”
Post-pandemic patterns are considerably different, Mahajan noted. “It’s more unpredictable now,” he said. “Me Vasantrao and Godavari didn’t do the kind of business they should have done, which is surprising since they had a good cast and great reviews. It’s hard to figure out what is going to work, and why.”
The parameters for success haven’t moved significantly in recent times, added Mangesh Kulkarni, Business Head, Zee Studios Marathi. “Even if we take a decadal view, a Rs 20-crore film is considered a big hit, while a Rs 10-crore film is regarded as having turned a profit for its producers.”
Marathi creators face the same problem that their Bengali and Punjabi peers do. In these language industries, Hindi cinema has gradually overtaken local productions. Better produced, better marketed and better distributed, Hindi films are seen as guaranteed business prospects. Marathi, Bengali and Punjabi productions have to work doubly hard to woo moviegoers.
“Marathi audiences expect authenticity and originality, a standard of the highest order,” Nikhil Sane observed. “They don’t seem to get carried away with remakes or templates. The films are competing with a rich tradition of theatre, literature and now streaming platforms.”
With the need for escapist entertainment amply fulfilled by Bollywood, standard fare in Marathi won’t always work, Mangesh Kulkarni added.
“Marathi viewers are open to run-of-the-mill content in Hindi,” he said. “But when it comes to Marathi, it’s like a parent wanting their children to do their homework properly. Marathi films work when they create a cultural longing that cannot be found in Hindi.”
The latest instance of this counterintuitive thinking is Paresh Mokashi’s Vaalvi, a twist-laden crime thriller that came out on January 13 and went on to be a sleeper hit. In a previous interview with Scroll, Mokashi observed, “You can’t plan your success. It is always about cinematic narrative – we don’t give this enough thought.”
For those in the industry, getting authentic numbers is difficult. Much of the analysis about the commercial aspects of Marathi cinema emerges from within the industry. Unlike Bollywood, Marathi films don’t have dedicated trade pundits or formal box-office trackers.
“Often, tall claims are made about a film’s performance with nothing on the ground to substantiate them,” Mangesh Kulkarni said. “The industry would do well to have a body that identifiably verifies box office figures.”
In addition, there is a pressing need for more formalised practices, said producer Sanjay Chhabria, whose company, Everest Films, has bankrolled Mahesh Manjrekar’s contemporary drama Mee Shivajiraje Bhosale Boltoy (2019) and the Mumbai-Pune-Mumbai and Boyz series.
“The bigger problem [for Marathi cinema] isn’t Hindi cinema but the creation of stars,” Chhabria said. “We take pride in saying we are content-oriented – it is our strength but also a weak area. For any industry to survive, you need a healthy mix of stardom and content-driven cinema. We need to look at more genres, like action. Look at Rohit Shetty’s Singham – it had a Maharashtrian character and its hit dialogue, “Ataa majhi satakli [I can’t take it anymore] is in Marathi.”
Other practices might need tweaking too. Marathi films are increasingly suffering from the pressure to land with a bang and make all the money there is to be made on the first weekend itself. This does not work for artistically ambitious Marathi productions whose reputations grow more slowly through word of mouth, and which need to linger in cinemas longer instead of being shoved out by the next hot Hindi release.
“Marathi films get the rough end of the stick in this regard,” Nikhil Majahan said. “For a film to penetrate, it has to make a big noise. Audiences will chose a big Hindi film on a Friday and keep the nice Marathi film for the Wednesday. By that time, the showcasing has come down by 50%. If they choose the nice Marathi film on Friday, the picture will change.”
There is a “massive lack of ambition at all levels”, Aditya Sarpotdar declared. “The channels of production, marketing and distribution and production haven’t been innovative at all, unlike in Hindi cinema. The biggest problem is not having consistently good producers who take good content to audiences.”
Saportdar is particularly upset about the fact that his film Unaad, a coming-of-age drama that was meant to be released in cinemas, was released directly on JioCinema instead.
“The perception is that younger audiences have moved to OTT”, Sarpotdar said – over the top media services, popularly referred to as streaming platforms. “Had I known that the film wasn’t going to be released in theatres, I would have made it differently.”
The practice of streaming movies originally meant for cinematic exhibition picked up pace during the early phase of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. As cinemas shut, producers across language industries sought to cut their losses by selling to streaming platforms. With producers continuing this practice even though the pandemic has passed, streaming services have emerged as a very real threat for directors who believe that their films must be viewed on the big screen.
Yet, streamers also offer an opportunity for Marathi distributors to find audiences beyond those who speak the language. Subtitled Marathi films are getting new life on Prime Video, ZEE5, JioCinema, SonyLIV, Netflix and Disney+ Hotstar.
For instance, at least 15%-20% of the viewership of Vaalvi came from non-Marathi subscribers, Mangesh Kulkarni said. “A greater sampling of films by non-Marathi viewers is slowly happening,” he added. “This will warm them up for Marathi films.”
But even here, there are challenges. Streaming platforms do not seem as open to acquiring Marathi movies as they are with other languages, say some in the industry.
“It’s a personal grudge that Marathi films are not as valued as films in Malayalam, Telugu or Tamil,” a producer said on the condition of anonymity. “They are looking at numbers, and don’t feel that they need Marathi cinema if the existing Marathi audience can be reached through Hindi. From a business point of view, it is a right argument, but not from the cultural point of view.”
Four steps forward and two steps behind – the Marathi film industry has a long-standing problem that even the super-women of Baipan Bhari Deva will find hard to fix.
Also read:
‘Baipan Bhari Deva’ review: A stirring ode to sisterhood
‘Vaalvi’ is a sleeper hit and nobody is more surprised than director Paresh Mokashi
How ‘Zombivli’ created a zombie epidemic in the middle of a pandemic