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Bollywood’s dirty secret: Paid reviews that are killing the industry
Bollywood’s murky side of paid reviews are part of system where fake praise, rate cards, threats and extortion thrive.
About two weeks after Jigra’s release, Karan Johar sold a 50 percent stake in Dharma Productions to Adar Poonawalla, chief executive of Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, for 10 billion rupees ($116m). Five months later in July, the makers of the six-billion-rupee ($69m) sci-fi film Kalki 2898 AD, starring Amitabh Bachchan, Prabhas and Deepika Padukone, served a legal notice to Kadel and another trade analyst Rohit Jaiswal for alleging on social media that the filmmakers were reporting fake box office numbers. They claimed that the business of at least three big-budget films starring three superstars – Kamal Haasan’s Indian 2, Suriya’s Kanguva and Rajinikanth’s Vettaiyan, whose cumulative budget was $110m – was impacted because of “tasteless” and negative reviews on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and X.
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