Big bucks on the block

Dancing at millionaire weddings, birthdays of business scions, corporate launches and award functions, has become a parallel revenue system for the stars of the Hindi film industry
TILL A year and a half ago, Sameera Reddy refused to do stage shows. “My father equated it with doing a mujra,” says the actress. But today Sam, as Bollywood fondly calls her, is one of the hottest names in the stage circuit. On some weeks, she does as many as three shows. Even as we speak, Sameera is returning home after performing at the Indian Cricket League podium in Hyderabad.
There is so much money in live shows today that it is increasingly becoming difficult for stars to avoid them. “My mother has accompanied me to most of my shows. And, she told daddy about how star concerts are so above board. At a function where I performed with Salman Khan, Lara Dutta, Katrina Kaif and others, I was looked after so well,” she says. Even ribbon-cutting and sharing the dais with corporate heads fetches big, easy money these days. As a result, while the number of films that an actor commits to in a year has come down to one or two, as against even 40 in the ‘80s, film stars have never been richer.
A leading show organiser says that Lara Dutta and Arjun Rampal were paid over Rs 20 lakh by a prominent Mumbai businessman to party with heiress Paris Hilton; Amisha Patel is said to make at least Rs 15-20 lakh from every appearance, doesn’t matter if it is in Surat or San Francisco; Malaika Arora Khan is red hot in the concert circuit in Dubai and Australia; and Dia Mirza and Aarti Chhabria are booked for a slew of stage shows, averaging between Rs 7-10 lakh per show. It is impossible to independently verify these figures but industry sources confirm that they are realistic amounts in today’s market.
Praising Malaika’s pragmatic approach to the whole show business, a concert organiser says that the actress is not very fussy about her fee. She has made an appearance in Mumbai for as little as Rs 50,000 and her fees can cross the Rs 10 lakh market for overseas stage shows. Malaika, who is out of the country, could not be contacted for a confirmation.
Akshay Kumar, who has done as many as 432 stage shows, says, “Doing a stage concert gives me a different high.” He is not talking about the Rs 1.50 crore he reportedly earns every time he shakes a leg at a major function. He is, apparently, referring to adrenaline. “Stage shows are challenging for someone like me because I put in a lot of energy and thought into every appearance I make. And I just love the face-to-face interaction with an audience,” he says. But the most expensive star, of course, is Shah Rukh Khan. According to news reports, he was paid ? 3,00,000 for his dance at the Mittal wedding reception in Kolkata.
Saif Ali Khan feels Shah Rukh has brought a lot of respectability to the stage concert business. “If the biggest star can dance at a wedding, why not I?” Saif says he had told himself when he returned from sharing stage with SRK at Lakshmi Mittal’s daughter Vanisha’s wedding in France.
Saif admits that at the wedding, minutes before he was supposed to go on stage, he was apprehensive about dancing. However, when he saw the professional approach of everybody involved and the levels of commitment that his co-actors Shah Rukh, Juhi Chawla and Rani Mukherjee brought, he relaxed. “We later extinguished our cigarettes in glasses of pink champagne,” he says recalling the sheer opulence of the wedding.
However, actors like Sunny Deol and Ajay Devgan have stayed away from live shows. “But it has more to do with the fact that these actors have two left feet,” says a leading choreographer.