Bollywood might be getting rapidly corporatised, but producers Sajid Nadiadwala and Vipul Shah offer a throwback to the 1960s and ’70s when showmanship was not such a rare thing. True to tradition, Nadiadwala and Shah take their own decisions, don’t believe in spend sheets and other such trifles, work with a chosen few and reward loyalty like kings. Deepali Nandwani meets the last of the movie moghuls

In a Bollywood that’s gradually being taken over by corporates with their PowerPoint presentations and spend sheets, producers Sajid Nadiadwala and Vipul Shah are mavericks. It’s not because of the sort of movies they make. Most of their films, in fact, are rather formulaic. They work with big stars, their movies are often shot abroad and feature lush cinematography, and their canvas is larger than life. Even the plots of their movies are riddled with the worst kind of stereotypes. What sets them apart in Bollywood today is the fact that they are the last of the independent producers, in the tradition of a Raj Kapoor or a B R Chopra. And they are highly successful as well. Director Sudhir Mishra, whose last movie Khoya Khoya Chand (2007), was set in 1950s Bollywood, says, “They were completely in control — from the script to the kind of music the film should have, to where it would be shot and who the actors were, every decision was taken by them.”
It’s a grand legacy that finds very few willing shoulders, except for Nadiadwala and Shah. Consider the similarities. They use their own money to make their movies or have partners who fund their projects, and none of them are big corporates. (“This way, I sleep peacefully at night. I am not risking my stakeholders’ money to fulfill my passion,” says Nadiadwala). They take most decisions independently (except for a few cosmetic ones like, say, the look of the stars), have tight-knit cliques, work with stars and crew they are comfortable with. And their lives, says Nasreen Munni Kabir, author of several books on Bollywood, is about glamour and grandeur that one associates with the world’s largest movie industry. “Unlike the new corporate producers and financiers who go largely by what’s put down on paper, these two look at movie-making as an individualistic experience.” Nadiadwala and Shah live in sprawling homes, own a fleet of luxury cars and sport international labels. While corporate producers like UTV or Reliance Big Films pay a star according to the deal made on paper, Nadiadwala or Shah often end up gifting their stars anything they desire. It could be a dress worth Rs 8 lakh (which Nadiadwala gifted Kareena on the sets of Kambakkht Ishq), or it could be an expensive foreign holiday.
Actor Akshay Kumar, who is an integral part of their inner circle, calls the two “the godfathers of Bollywood”. With a string of hits behind them, a budget of Rs 100 crore or more per film, and tie-ups with big names like Eros International and Fox Star Studios for distribution and technical help, Nadiadwala and Shah top the list of the Hindi film industry’s power elite. They are also a fast disappearing breed in a Bollywood that’s looking to get more organised. 

SAJID NADIADWALA

Even after a lifelong association with films, Bollywood, for 43-year-old Sajid Nadiadwala, is a place of mystery and excitement. “I love the magic of the stars, the grandeur of the studios and the opulence of the sets. My world revolves around movies.” One part of him, he says, craves for anonymity. But that’s a part which rarely wins. Nadiadwala is a performer. I watch as he interacts animatedly with Jiah Khan, the star of one of his forthcoming films, and a bunch of designers.  
A tall, well-built man with wavy hair and lively eyes, Nadiadwala is extremely candid. Ask him if there is a clique in Bollywood and he will admit to it, unlike a lot of others who deny the existence of an inner circle. “Loyalty is an important attribute in Bollywood. When you work with an actor for months on end, you tend to get close to them and you are party to their tragedies and their triumphs. If I like the experience of working with a star, I would want to repeat him.” According to Akshay, “Nadiadwala is an emotional man, who takes hard-nosed decisions based on his instincts and his emotions, rather than stark facts.”
Apart from Salman Khan, “one of my closest friends”, and Akshay, “a producer’s delight”, Nadiadwala also bonds with directors and siblings Farah and Sajid Khan. “We are soul brothers,” says Sajid, who recalls how Nadiadwala laid out the red carpet for his debut movie. “I wanted to make it on a small scale with new stars, and shoot it in India, but Heyy Babyy (2007) was ultimately shot in Australia.” For Sajid’s second film, House Full, which was originally set in Kerala, Nadiadwala took the crew all across Europe.
“Cinema is about this larger-than-life experience,” muses Nadiadwala, lounging in a chair in his opulent private chamber that has deep leather couches, a large teakwood table, and a gold and wood bookshelf. Lying casually on the table is a pair of red gloves worn by Sylvester Stallone in Rocky. On a cabinet behind the table is a statue of Johnny Depp in his Jack Sparrow avatar, which was gifted to him by Jerry Bruckheimer, producer of Pirates of the Caribbean. He is dressed in True Religion jeans and a white linen shirt, and a Franck Muller gleams on his wrist. He is also a fan of brands like Roberto Cavalli, Giorgio Armani and Patek Philippe.
Nadiadwala understands the power that stars wield and the big money that his films can make if they appeal to that guy in Patna, that man watching a movie in a single screen theatre in Roorkee, and the Indian in a multiplex in New York. “I want people from Bihar to Los Angeles, Tokyo to South Africa to have fun while watching my movies. They are as much about the locations, the fashion, and the stars as about the story. I pay huge amounts of money to get the best team on board.” For Kambakkht Ishq, Nadiadwala roped in Stallone, who played a Hollywood star and Akshay played his body double in the movie.
Next to his double-storied office at Versova — Mumbai’s star-studded suburb — is a garage filled with about eight or nine of his cars. Among Nadiadwala’s prized possessions are a steel blue Bentley with custom interiors and a silver Porsche Cayenne. “I don’t know how to drive,” he says. “I don’t know why I buy cars.” Nadiadwala bought his first car, a Fiat, in 1985, a real achievement since his family didn’t really approve of kids splurging on expensive stuff. “The times I grew up in, only seriously rich people or those in the movies had cars.”

Born and raised in Mumbai, Nadiadwala’s earliest memories are of mahurats and star-studded premiere nights. The Nadiadwala family, who were in the construction business and migrated to Mumbai from Gujarat in the 1940s, once virtually owned Malad, a suburb in north Mumbai. But his grandfather, Abdul Karim Nadiadwala, also owned two movie theatres — New Era and Savera — in Malad. He would pile his entire family into his car and drive them for an evening out at the movies, followed by dinner. In 1955, he produced his first film, Inspector, a thriller directed by Shakti Samanta. “The banner was then named Pushpa Films after my grandmother. As a family, we have always been liberal. Dadaji produced over 30 films in his time. Had it not been for him, we would still have been in the construction business,” he says. After his grandfather died in 1989, his five sons went their separate ways but three of them continued making films under different banners. When Nadiadwala was about 10, his family packed him off to his maternal grandfather’s house in Dadar, in central Mumbai. “I graduated in law and then did a course in Chartered Accountancy. My granddad wanted me to join the IAS.”
The lure of cinema, however, proved to be stronger. “Moviemaking was in my genes. I had applied to sit for the IAS exams. But my uncle Habib Nadiadwala, who was producing Ghulami with (director) J P Dutta, asked me to assist on that film. I was about 20 then. When I went on the sets, I knew I belonged there.” Nadiadwala began as an AC technician in his uncle’s production house, worked as a spot boy and then graduated to become a production assistant. In 1990, he established his own production company, Nadiadwala Grandson Entertainment Pvt Ltd. He debuted as a producer in 1993 with Zulm Ki Hukumat. “I was very young, and a boy who’s just passed out of college has a lot of anger in him and can be very violent. I put all that aggression in my work.”
Zulm Ki Hukumat was an average grosser and his next few films floundered. “People generally loved to write me off. My films would take a long time to complete, which can be financially suicidal for a producer. I was making a film with Sanjay Dutt when he was arrested in the Mumbai bomb blasts case.” And just when he appeared to be on the brink of total disaster, Nadiadwala bounced back with Jeet and Judwaa, both Salman starrers, in 1996. Since 2000, which was when he married Wardha Khan, a former journalist, he says, “my balance sheet has shown healthy profits. It’s been a gold rush”.
Over the years, the kind of movies that Nadiadwala makes has changed dramatically. From action and family dramas, he has moved to making romantic comedies. Sajid calls him “the last standing romantic”. His greatest regret is that he didn’t produce Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge or Gaddar. While he may have moved across genres, what hasn’t changed is his resolve to keep Nadiadwala Grandson as a privately-owned company. “I thought about going corporate, but frankly that’s not the way I work. I don’t need a CEO to run this company,” he says. “Because I take the decisions I don’t have someone else to blame, which is why I am very careful about the scripts I choose to fund. Also, I am using my own money so I am not answerable to a bunch of suit-wearing executives, who probably know less about the moviemaking business than I do. Besides, creativity is one man’s decision and you get confused when you involve someone else.”
Nadiadwala’s biggest grouse against people from ‘corporatised’ Bollywood is their tendency to call his films “old-world”. “I am clear — commerce and art have to blend somewhere. I have over 100 people working under me. My dream cannot turn into their nightmare, which is why I make films that are commercial, big budget and have big stars.” He needs people, he says, only for post-production, a part he is not well-equipped to handle. So once in a while, he ties up with a studio or a big distributor. For KI, he went with Eros International. And before that, for Heyy Baby, he tied up with Fox Studios.
Nadiadwala also likes to take it slow and easy and makes one film a year. “It gives me time to work on the project and plan the publicity. I know what my audience wants and with each film, I want to create an impact.” The job of the producer, he says, actually begins after the shooting of the film is complete. And the thought of being a director somehow doesn’t appeal to him. “The director has to be on the sets at 9 every morning. I go in when I like. And if I don’t get along with a star, I just don’t go on the sets for months on end.”

VIPUL SHAH

Unlike clothes-horse Sajid Nadiadwala, Vipul Shah is uncomfortable before the camera. Shah, whose Singh is Kinng (2008) grossed over Rs 59 crore worldwide, likes his Giorgio Armani suits but rarely wears them. He is, simply put, an introvert who doesn’t pay too much attention to the way he dresses. Akshay Kumar, a regular in Shah’s movies since Aankhen in 2002, calls him “a simple man with very basic tastes”. “He doesn’t party much and is passionate only about cinema and his books.” Like his actor wife, Shefali, he is a big reader and the shelves in his Juhu home are crammed with books of all sorts — philosophy, fiction, non-fiction, self-help books, Shakespeare’s plays… The house bears the Twinkle Khanna stamp — baroque furniture, gold leaf paint on one of the walls, lots of candles strewn around, distressed texture on the furniture… Akshay and Twinkle are family friends, so two years ago, when the Shahs moved into their Juhu home, Twinkle offered to do it up. It’s a place Shah prefers to premieres, award shows and parties.
“I try and get out of social commitments,” he says. “I have close friends in the industry like Salman (Khan) and Ajay (Devgn), with whom I worked in London Dreams, and of course, Akshay and Twinkle, but they’re people I have known over the past few years. I can’t claim to have deep roots within Bollywood. I don’t like partying. But you’ll never see Aditya Chopra at a party. And see how successful he is. I can’t keep faking happiness for two whole hours.” Shah, like Akshay, is an outsider and that’s one reason, says the star, why they hit it off immediately.
In spite of his general reticence, Shah has been anointed by industry observers as the new movie moghul and even the next Subhash Ghai. Like Ghai, he makes big-budget movies that talk about family values (read Waqt: The Race Against Time (2005), Namaste London (2007), and even Singh is Kinng). You’d think these hackneyed stories have no place in modern, multiplex-ed India, but they make huge amounts of money. Namaste London, for instance, grossed Rs 63.24 crore.
The only blip in his otherwise perfect record was probably London Dreams, which released in November last year. Panned by critics, the movie, made at a staggering cost of Rs 120 crore, started slow and after two weeks the collection stood at just Rs 30 crore. The producer-director is disappointed, of course, but shrugs off flops and hits as part of the game. “You win some, you lose some,” he says and then, analysing the reasons adds, “Actually, the stars didn’t make themselves available for the marketing events for the film. I had planned so many things for which I needed the stars; the director alone doesn’t amount to many eyeballs on television or in live events. I had planned concerts with Salman, Ajay and Asin. They didn’t have the time. Even my music composer, Shankar Mahadevan, was in the US,” says Shah who is already on to his next project.
Shah grew up in a joint family that had migrated to Mumbai from Mandvi, in Kutch, and was in the publishing business. Nothing in his background indicated that he would ever be part of Bollywood. His only tryst with movies happened on Sundays when the family spent their afternoons watching a film at Eros or Regal or Minerva theatres followed by a Gujarati thali. “We were a large family that did everything together, including watching movies, a fact that reflects in the kind of cinema I make.”
In 1983, while still in college, he stumbled upon an amateur theatre group and joined it. That was the turning point. “I would rehearse till four in the morning, get back home, sleep for three hours, shower, eat quickly and then be back for rehearsals. I looked at music, at the way the stage has to be lit up, figured whether the stars were playing their parts right. I learnt my basics in theatre,” says the soft-spoken producer. “It’s got a lot to do with theatre. You learn how to economise.”

Somewhere down the line Shah realised he wasn’t made for acting and began directing and producing Gujarati plays before eventually moving on to television shows to earn that extra money. “I started doing experimental plays, moved to commercial theatre, then to sex comedies because they are huge hits, and then dumped them to do television and Gujarati films. As an actor I got Rs 100 per show, as a director I earned Rs 1,000.”
In 1994, Shah made Alpviram, a television serial for Sony TV. Alpviram, written by his friend and fellow television producer Aatish Kapadia, was inspired by a real life incident in Houston and revolved around the rape of a comatose woman. “I wondered what would happen to the girl if she was from a middle-class Indian home.” Alpviram got Shah noticed but it was not until 2002 that Shah made Aankhen, his first movie, written by Kapadia. In 2001, Shah was shooting at the Russian Culture Centre in Mumbai when the father-and-son duo of Vinod and Gaurang Doshi called him for a meeting. The Doshis wanted him to direct a television show, but Shah turned down the offer. He wanted to do a film for their banner, Gaurang Doshi Productions, instead. He narrated the script of Aankhen, a story of a disgruntled bank officer who uses three blind men to pull off a heist at his own bank. The Doshis decided to put their money on him. Shah, who had visualised Amitabh Bachchan in the lead role and who one day barged onto the sets of a Bachchan movie, was told by the superstar to write the entire script and come back. “Aatish and I holed up in a Khandala hotel and wrote the script in three days flat.” Big B agreed to come on board. “I wanted Akshay for one of the roles. I always thought he had the potential but was highly underutilised.” The star’s manager, Vikas Bali, happened to be a fan of Alpviram and asked him to meet Shah. “Akshay already had over 14 flops in a row and was reluctant to work with a new director. He later told me that he wanted to say no but was blown away by the script.” Aankhen, made on a budget of Rs 18 crore, collected over Rs 25 crore worldwide, and gave him enough leverage in Bollywood. Waqt, his second film in 2005, again with Bachchan and Kumar, was also a hit. Loyalty counts for a lot in Shah’s books and he turned down an offer to produce Ghajini because A R Murugadoss, the film’s director, was against taking on Akshay for the lead role.
So what is his company, Blockbuster Productions, worth today? Shah isn’t telling but he does say that it’s a one-man show. He runs it like a family firm. “That’s the way I have always worked. I take all the decisions and I face all the flak about the kind of movies I make.” He doesn’t mind tie-ups, though. His production company, for instance, has entered into a multiple-film deal with Fox Star Studios. The partnership, he says, would extend to development and production of a visual effects-driven fantasy action movie, a romantic comedy and a first-look deal on Shah’s future projects. “I need assistance in the technical field and in distribution. Not in movie-making. I don’t need anyone else to approve my projects. What we are trying to achieve here is getting two cultures to come together. Get the best of Hollywood to make films better than what they are making now.”

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