Ram Gopal Varma has never been one to hold back his opinions on the film industry, and his latest remarks take direct aim at what he sees as the root cause of Telugu cinema’s recurring financial troubles, a near-total lack of accountability among directors, paired with producers who don’t fully understand what they’re signing up for.
Ram Gopal Varma blames directors for budget overruns
Speaking to Great Andhra, Varma explained that budgets spiral out of control largely because the people funding films don’t grasp the scale of what’s involved.“The producer doesn’t even understand what budget really means. Why? Because they don’t know how many shots the director is planning, how much preparation is involved,” he said.The filmmaker continued, “They take all these elements and set a budget, and he agrees to that. But things don’t happen exactly as planned, and when that plan falls through, the budget ends up going over. But since it’s already started, you don’t really know where to stop.”Varma argued that responsibility for cost overruns should fall squarely on directors, but said that kind of accountability is largely missing from the Telugu film industry. “The most important thing is to hold the director accountable. We’re the ones coming up with the ideas, deciding how to spend the money. If the director isn’t held accountable, how will the business model work?” he said, adding that producers who simply defer to a director’s decisions without question end up being impossible to control.He also pointed out that even commercially successful films don’t always translate into profits for producers, since inflated budgets often eat into returns. “Even if the film is a hit, the producer doesn’t make much money. Why? Because all of it went into the cost budget,” he said.Taking his criticism further, Varma questioned whether Telugu film financiers deserve to be called producers at all. “Why are we even calling them producers here? Basically, they aren’t producers, they’re just investors,” he said, adding that genuine movie production requires deep involvement and expertise that most financiers simply don’t have.
The Rs 1 crore actress who never shot a scene
To illustrate the industry’s casual attitude toward money, Varma shared an anecdote about a senior actress given a 10-day call sheet, who showed up in full makeup every day but was never called to shoot for five to six of those days.According to Varma, she felt guilty about accepting payment without delivering the work and even offered to return her advance, but was paid in full regardless. He estimated her total earnings for the ten days at Rs 1 crore, noting, “She got the full payment, though, and she felt guilty for taking payment without doing the work. When the budget goes from Rs 100 crores to 200 crores, nobody really cares about Rs 1-2 crore.“
Ram Gopal Varma on why do budgets keep inflating?
Varma attributed ballooning budgets to a culture of one-upmanship within the industry, where filmmakers constantly try to outdo previous blockbusters in scale. “They’ll say, that movie’s song was grand, let’s make a song even better than that. Or, ‘KGF 2’ came out with amazing action, let’s add something like that,” he said, adding that these competitive additions steadily drive up both cost and shoot duration.Despite his criticism of the business side, Varma acknowledged the creative strength of South Indian cinema nationally, pointing out that most of India’s highest-grossing films come from the region. He also offered a counterintuitive take on flop films, arguing they aren’t the disaster they’re often made out to be. “The industry runs on flop movies, not the hit ones. All the money from hit movies goes straight to the producer and the people involved. Flop movies’ money usually gets divided among the technicians and workers,” he said. “The money doesn’t disappear. It moves from one pocket to another.”
Ram Gopal Varma on the work front
On the work front, Ram Gopal Varma is set to reunite with Satya actor Manoj Bajpayee after nearly a decade for the horror comedy ‘Police Station Mein Bhoot’. Bajpayee has already expressed strong confidence in the project, telling SCREEN in a recent interview that the filmmaker is “back” in top form with this outing. The film, which also stars Genelia D’Souza and Ramya Krishnan.
