Veteran producer-director KC Bokadia has urged actors to treat a film’s budget as carefully as their own, warning that avoidable star-side expenses are quietly making Hindi cinema harder to finance.
Speaking to The News Mill, Bokadia named Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan and Rajinikanth as examples of professional restraint. None of them, he said, expected a producer to bear the salaries of their personal staff.
What the older set got right
Bokadia recalled a period when actors shared meals between shots, contrasting it with today’s practice of spending breaks inside vanity vans. He offered an anecdote from a Chennai shoot with Jackie Shroff, where he intervened after noticing the actor had been allotted a double room instead of a suite.
Shroff was not concerned. According to Bokadia, he said: “Mr Bokadia, you don’t have to play cricket. It has a good bathroom. It’s going well. We’ll shoot all day and come at night.”
The vanity van line item
His larger concern is cost creep on set. Some actors, Bokadia said, now expect multiple vanity vans equipped with facilities such as gyms, along with additional staff, which can significantly raise a film’s daily production costs.
He questioned the economics behind such arrangements. Maintaining several vans and a larger crew, he argued, adds overhead without improving the film itself—and the producer is left to absorb it.
A business survives only if the producer does
Bokadia framed the issue as one of mutual survival. “This is a business. The actors should also think: it is a business. If the producer is alive, then we will also be alive,” he said.
He added a sharper warning: “We come and say, have mercy on the producer. Otherwise, such a day will come, the ones who will give four shoulders will also have to bring it on rent.”
The lesson for working actors and their teams is practical:
- Great stars of the older generation did not bill personal staff to the producer.
- Shared meals and modest rooms kept daily shoot costs lower.
- Vanity van fleets and gym-equipped trailers are now a recurring budget line.
Bokadia’s credentials give the appeal weight. He made his production debut with Rivaaj in 1972 and directed Aaj Ka Arjun in 1990, going on to produce and direct more than 60 films including Teri Meherbaniyan, Pyar Jhukta Nahin and Lal Baadshah.
His argument is not that stars should sacrifice comfort, but that the producer’s viability is the industry’s floor. When that floor cracks, everyone above it is at risk.
Source: The News Mill
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