The smell of cigarette smoke accompanies us all the way from the foyer to the elevator and up to the third floor of Mannat Annexe. Shah Rukh Khan is in the building.
Outside, in front of the gate of the sprawling, sea-facing bungalow called Mannat (which, roughly translated, means a wish) in Mumbai’s upscale Bandra Bandstand area, groups of teenagers are busy taking selfies against the famous nameplate. Khan, who turned 50 on November 2, is on a rare day off from shooting—Kajol, the leading lady of his next blockbuster release Dilwale, wanted a break and that forced the megastar to take one as well, something he usually doesn’t like doing. The upside: It enabled him to catch up on much-needed sleep.
As we enter the library where Khan meets visitors, he gets up and hobbles towards us warmly—he is recovering from yet another leg injury. Dressed in a casual blue jersey, blue jeans and matching blue sneakers, Khan has been busy with his Mac, a self-balancing IO Hawk skateboard next to him. Around the room lie empty coffee cups and glasses of water, proof that despite the rare off-day from the sets, the superstar, who has reclaimed his top place in the 2015 Forbes India Celebrity 100 List, has been having a busy day meeting visitors.
The slate of his upcoming films is diverse and will test both his artistic and business acumen. There’s his next release, home production Dilwale directed by Rohit Shetty, with whom Khan made the runaway hit Chennai Express. Then there’s the Rahul Dholakia-directed Raees, a thriller set in Gujarat, which is a co-production with Excel Entertainment of Ritesh Sidhwani and Farhan Akhtar, followed by Yash Raj Films’ Fan, another film Khan is extremely excited about. Khan is also in talks with directors like Aanand L Rai and Gauri Shinde for two other films.
The key here is, Dilwale apart, all the directors Khan is working with belong to the new crop of filmmakers who make movies quite differently from the usual commercial blockbusters that fans have come to expect. And that’s why Khan, who began his acting career doing theatre and has often dabbled in movies which do not strictly fit the regular commercial cinema scheme of things (think Asoka (2001), Swades (2004), Paheli (2005)), is excited.
“But still, the film which all this will ride on will have to be a Dilwale type commercial film," Khan explains. What he means is this: If he has to indulge in the creative satisfaction of doing movies that are different from the usual commercial blockbusters, he will still need that one mega movie a year which will act as a financial cushion. “We will need to balance, else it will be difficult to run a business and I will have to borrow and be at the mercy of distributors," he says candidly.
A CANNY ENTREPRENEURDespite the fact that he is almost entirely delegative as a leader and leaves the day-to-day running of all his business interests to his team (Red Chillies is now led by Venky Mysore, a former Sun Life India head, who first came on board with KKR), Khan has a very sharp business mind. Red Chillies has just signed a multi-crore deal with Multi Screen Media (MSM), a Sony arm, for co-production of television, digital and film content. The wide-ranging deal is a benchmark in the Indian film industry and could be a potential game changer. It also means moving Khan’s satellite rights away from the Zee Group, who are also close friends of his. A keen believer in relationships, Khan decided to play a delicate balancing act so that no one was left unhappy.
In a sense, this balance Khan strikes between personal relationships and business is at the heart of his success. “My team is clear about how to do business, not just go gung ho and be selfish. Be it Venky or Gaurav [Verma, chief revenue officer, who also handles distribution], we want to do well but sensibly. And I still have the right to say no to my team if I feel I am hurting the sentiments of friends for a better commercial deal."
Knowing how long to hang on is also something Khan has mastered, particularly with his cricket franchise KKR. After a poor start, when everyone, including his family, advised him to let the franchise go, Khan decided to hang on just a while longer and things started turning around rather dramatically for the team. Today, KKR is among the top franchises in IPL and has won the championship twice. “I believe that if you stick around [with] a business [for] a little longer than when you think you should give it up, then it turns around." Khan’s business sense revolves around ensuring that his iconic status as a film actor brings in the benefits for his businesses —whether it is the production house or the cricket franchise.
“In Trinidad and Tobago there is a huge Indian diaspora from UP and Bihar and they love my films. So I had the confidence that for my team, people will come and watch the matches. So yes, I have used the core of entertainment and spawned many businesses around it. I have the confidence that my stardom will add more fans and give the business a chance. In my heart I feel that someday cricket will reach North America. Every fourth or fifth person in the world is an Indian. So you can’t avoid us and this will happen," says Khan.
A FAN OF VFXOne area where the art of cinema merges with craft and business sense is visual effects (VFX), an area Khan is particularly excited about in the context of his business. Red Chillies VFX, which has been at the forefront of special effects in several major Indian blockbusters, from Khan’s own Ra.One (2011) to Hrithik Roshan-starrer Krrish 3 (2013), is currently giving finishing touches to the special effects in Fan, which will take its VFX capability to the next level with some never-seen-before visual effects. In the movie, directed by Maneesh Sharma, Khan plays a young boy, a fan, who resembles the real Shah Rukh Khan, and the visual effects ensure that Khan looks like a younger version of himself all through the film. “The movie was narrated to me in this very room eight years ago. Today I have a company where I can use this technology, where the same actor plays a younger person [with help from VFX] and then plays his age. While other Hollywood movies have done it for much shorter lengths of time, we are doing this for the entire length of the movie—around two and a half hours. To be able to do this in a film will be amazing. Not to look like me and yet look like me."
“For a film like Fan, we are taking it to a very different level," he says. “We can do bread and butter stuff, we can remove wires, make people fly and s**t… but with this movie it will showcase the immense talent at the company and a skill-set that is really cutting edge. We are also in talks with Aanand Rai for another film where they want me to play a dwarf. That will require a different kind of technology, a Lord of the Rings technology, equipment and motion capture technique… we plan to do this in India. We are bringing world class quality and equipment here to do international-level work."
Khan says audiences in India, fed on the best Hollywood films, now expect international-level special effects in Indian movies as well. “Indian movie budgets are still low, but I would like to keep earning and upgrading the technology at my VFX company to make sure we are always doing cutting edge work and not just cleaning up wireframes, which is more like back-office outsourced work. We just about break even. Quality is needed, and Indian creative people will need to believe that," he says.
Good quality in VFX will come for a price, he adds. “Quality work needs time and more than time, you need people with the best talent to do it. And the best talent is expensive. You clean up a photo for one hour but to make it the best, it may take three and a half hours. You need to be okay with that. If you don’t give the technical guy the best money, he goes to work for a Harry Potter."
Khan says as far as technology like VFX is concerned, India is still fighting a perception battle. “The Indian reputation still is such that Hollywood wants to outsource small work here and not cutting edge stuff. But I have told everyone in my company that we won’t take on projects that are a very small portion or the non-creative part of the movie project. I am very clear that whenever there are special effects in a Red Chillies film, it will have to be of international standards and will set a benchmark and get people used to a certain level."
And VFX cannot be ignored for long, he points out. “It is a part of life in making a movie. But I know it will happen. One day there will be a blowout. You will realise you can’t make a good-looking film without good VFX. Once you get used to a good thing, it becomes a habit. Today you can’t afford to put up mediocre stuff. We are being compared to Hollywood."
“Have you watched Spectre?," Khan asks animatedly. “I get offended when my son and his friends watch Spectre and say the car blew up better than in some of my movies. I have also blown up a Bentley and got it to make eight and a half turns and made it look as real as possible with glass cracks and all. When my kids watch a movie where special effects have not been given enough attention to, they say, ‘Papa…yuck, Papa.’ I tell them, ‘Aryan [Khan’s 18-year-old son] they don’t have much money’. They turn around and say, ‘Then Papa, they shouldn’t do it na?’ My car in Dilwale has to fly better than the one in Spectre!"
‘MAKE MONEY, FOLLOW YOUR HEART’Khan says he’s somewhat of a Sufi in the way he thinks, far removed from what his movies are or the way people perceive him in real life. “If you read what I write or even what I sometimes say on Twitter… my personal flight of fantasy is vague, weird, different, philosophical, bordering on boring or amazing. It is more like [that of] a Sufi poet. If I use that in my films, chances are I will isolate you and myself from the business I do.
But a Sufi heart aside, Khan admits he knows when and how to grab an opportunity to make money. “I am not greedy. If I sit with my team, I don’t know when and who is going to pay me, where my next cheque is coming from or how much I am spending on what. I never sit down for accounts. But I know this: If I get a chance to earn some money, then I won’t let go of that opportunity. And by this, I don’t mean for businesses which are established and have a team, gestation period, etc. Here I am talking about my own [work]… if even now I am told that I have to go for a dinner which I will be compensated for, then I will leave everything else to go and do it. To me, this money is not easily earned it’s a lot of hard work. I believe that you have to catch an opportunity before it crosses you, not later."
“I meet the premiers of the world, I was supposed to meet the Pope. But if there is even a function on some street, I will do it."
In a sense, Khan says the persona he has created and his iconic status forces him to keep running on the treadmill of work and earn money. “People say Shah Rukh Khan shouldn’t do this or that kind or work. I have always said I believe I am not Shah Rukh Khan, I am the guy who works for Shah Rukh Khan and he has told me to keep working. Because the day I become Shah Rukh Khan, then I won’t work for even a minute as Shah Rukh Khan does not need to work. My face sells, I can walk into a place and make money. By that logic I don’t need to work at all. But I feel I need to keep working so that [all] this continues… my face keeps selling."
But even as he keeps moving, he knows the value of following his heart too. That, however, has to be after he has enough material wealth. “So I would tell a youngster: Have a yearning for earning. And once you have earned, however greedy you are, keep a limit. After that, do what makes you happy and what you love to do. Don’t jump into sugarcane production because someone tells you there is money to be made in it. I would never do that. Very early in my career I was told by my friend Vivek Vaswani: Get into a position of choice and then do what you want to do."
The studio plan, he admits, is a kind of a “shattered dream".
“We all say ‘Make in India’ these days. Personally, I am passionate about making a great movie studio in India. We have a cinema culture here, so we should also have an international studio here. For now I don’t think any international studio wants to invest and make a brick-and-mortar studio here since it’s not viable for them. I calculated that if we have a studio today which is packed with all slots booked and shifts sold, it will still take 40 years to recover the investment. So it’s not a viable business model for now. It’s unaffordable. Today prices of land in Mumbai are too high. Even if I want to, I don’t think it’s possible to recoup the investments. So at this point, it’s a very shattered dream, but I have this dream."
And that will be an Indian film. “It’ll be better to be the master in my world, which I still haven’t mastered, than to throw myself out into the world [and do a Hollywood movie]. The market is here. I would still feel more proud if I can do a ‘Made in India’ film which becomes international."
He is clear that with the cult status his Indian audiences, and those in the diaspora worldwide, have given him, he will not do a meaningless role in a Hollywood film.
“It’s about the country. I do represent the country at this juncture of my career and stand for an important peg in a cinematic context. It’s an issue of national pride. In western movies, I cannot do work where people in my country feel, ‘Why has he done this?’ That will be letting Indians down. In this country at least 10-11 crore people watch our movies. And I would think, of over one billion Indians, half a billion may know me at least by name."
While he is excited about the discussions he is currently having with Bend It Like Beckham director Gurinder Chadha for a possible project, Khan says he’d do a friendly appearance anytime for “good friend" Monica Bellucci. “If Monica Bellucci says, ‘Shah Rukh come and just sit in this scene’, I’d happily do it just for her."
Otherwise, of course, it will have to be a “telling role". “Also, I am 50, I don’t know karate and I don’t know how to dance like [John] Travolta. Unless, of course, there’s a role about a 50-year-old brown man. The chance to do Jungle Book is gone. There I would have played Mowgli. If they make a movie on Mowgli at 50, I am the guy they should take!" says Khan, his sense of humour kicking into play. “Otherwise I’d have to play an Indian doctor or, given the way I look, a villain who plants bombs and runs away. I don’t want to do that."
But haven’t Irrfan Khan and Priyanka Chopra also gone international and done impactful parts, we ask.
“I am not comparing myself with anyone, but I do feel the expectation from me would be higher. The names you mention are of younger people. My consideration at 50 will be different. If I give nine months of mine, I need to come back with something which is on par with what I would have done in India. But that film which the whole world watches, I want to be a part of that Indian film," he reiterates.
And India’s time has come, we point out. Khan adds quickly: “Haan, aur mera bhi. [Yes, and mine too.]"
First Published: Dec 22, 2015, 06:38
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