A Hot And Silly Tale

The film Chori Chori Chupke Chupke has been known for all the wrong reasons so far. First, its producer was picked up for connections with Mumbai’s murky underworld. Then its financial backer, wealthy diamond merchant Bharat Shah, was nabbed in connection with the funding. To add to its woes, cops seized the prints and refused to allow its release till the case was over. Now such right-wing loonie groups as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (vhp) and Bajrang Dal plan to distribute pamphlets at the theatres and convince cine-goers to shun the film. So the film is doomed at the box office even before it’s release, right?

Wrong. All the 325-odd prints of the Rs 13 crore Salman-Rani-Preity starrer were sold out on the eve of its release last week, netting a cool Rs 16 crore in the government’s kitty. (The film was released nationally under a court-appointed distributor. The revenues will go into the state’s treasury with an interest accruing during the period of the case). These include 89 prints sold overseas. So, is bad publicity good in Bollywood? Says resident trade pundit Taran Adarsh: "Negative or positive publicity is only as good as the film." But he doesn’t rule out an "almost 100 per cent collection" in the first week. And in a cruel paradox, even as the film was released on March 9, Shah was chargesheeted for various crimes including extortion and plotting to murder.

But it is already the most talked-about release of the season. Interestingly, the Mumbai territory has been bought by Shah’s vip Movies. Partner Vinay Choksi confirms: "We have bought 55 prints for the Mumbai territory at Rs 2 crore. It’s a good film and we expect it to do well." The court receiver, Santosh Singh Jain, insists that there’s nothing wrong from the legal point of view with selling the rights to the highest bidder. Shah’s company bid the highest and got the rights. The critical Mumbai territory includes parts of Maharashtra and Gujarat. Gujarat usually contributes between 40 and 50 per cent of this territory. Now Choksi is skittish about the response in quake-hit Gujarat. The overseas rights went for Rs 4 crore and music rights were sold for Rs 2.65 crore. Curiously, the film, if successful, could help fill up the depleted coffers of the debt-ridden Maharashtra government. Explains Jain: "After the distributor’s 20 per cent commission on the minimum guarantee he paid for the film and his publicity and print cost, the excess money generated is called overflow. This is equally shared between him and the producer. In this case, the producer’s share of the overflow will go the government."

For Shah, however, vip’s buying over the rights for the Mumbai territory should come as some consolation. His claim on the world rights of the film had been rejected by the court. A few days before his arrest, Shah told this correspondent: "I have spent Rs 13 crore on the film. I have the world rights. It’s all on paper." But some equations have drastically changed since then. 

Shot extensively in Europe, Chori Chori... falls in line with the slick upmarket look that the Hindi film industry has been striving to achieve in the recent past. It’s about a happy couple played by Salman Khan and Rani Mukherjee, who live peacefully in an overtly all-is-well family set-up. The hero’s grand-dad Amrish Puri has only one wish: to become a great grand-dad. Rani gets pregnant but in a sad twist of fate and other things, the baby dies. Doctors tell her she would never be able to have a child. The tragic hero is caught between his wife’s ill luck and grand-dad’s fervent wish. Enter Preity Zinta as a hooker. A ‘simple’ deal is struck: the beloved couple and Zinta shack up together in a mansion somewhere in Switzerland. Then Rani leaves the duty-bound husband and the whore alone. The tall tale climaxes with Preity Zinta delivering a baby and promising to reform herself and lead a respectable life on the cue. But horror of horrors: the ‘happy’ couple, presumably happier with a child out of the wedlock, go back to their all-is-well household. As not many are going to wonder whatever happened to the concept of no-sex-please surrogate mother, the film is expected to do very well. So will hot and silly Chori Chori... storm the box office? Watch this space.