August 9, 2008 ☼ Bollywood ☼ competitive intolerance ☼ Economy ☼ free markets ☼ free speech ☼ freedom of expression ☼ insurance ☼ media ☼ Public Policy ☼ risk management
This is an archived blog post from The Acorn.
If the Indian government is failing to clamp down on competitive intolerance, the film and insurance industries have devised their own solution:
Politics and public sentiment, Bollywood has learned the hard way, can wind it at the box-office. With community protest increasingly becoming part of the noise accompanying a film release, the industry has decided to hedge its bets. And what better way than buying insurance cover. Most new Bollywood films are insured against everything from bans to terrorism, says producer Punkej Kharbanda, who made the controversial Matrubhoomi (A Nation without Women).
“…producers buy cover on an approximate and not actual budget,” says a trade insider. Apart from traditional cover for cast/key members, props and equipment, raw stock, negatives and extra expenses, a film producer is also protected if a movie is hit by adverse weather or if there is an illness in the family.
“Another attractive policy,” says leading Bollywood lawyer Shekhar Menon, “is the Multimedia Liability Insurance (Errors and Omissions) which protects directors from a quiver of legal claims, including those arising from defamation, libel or slander; copyright infringement (such as in the Raakesh Roshan-Ram Sampat Krazzy 4 spat or the Manoj Kumar-Shah Rukh Khan Om Shanti Om encounter); trademark infringement; invasion of privacy, plagiarism; emotion distress; negligence and even imprisonment.” [TOI]There you go: the insurance markets may now help define the practical limits of freedom of expression.
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