Many A-listers would be seen in Goa bringing in 2011. Some of them like Anil Kapoor and daughter Sonam Kapoor, Akshay Kumar and wife Twinkle have taken time off from their schedules to be in Goa at this time of the year.
However most of the the stars, big or small, are in Goa at this time for the simple reason that they aren't working. With as many as 98 Hindi films under-performing drastically activity in the handful of studios in Mumbai has come to a near-standstill. As a matter of fact the only major film to be shot in the studios in December was Anees Bazmi's Ready with the star of the year Salman Khan.
And Anees, regarded as one of the more boxoffice-friendly directors of Bollywood, was not quite in the rejoicing mood. After admitting that his latest comedy No Problem had indeed failed to live up to expectations Anees was reprimanded by the No Problem producer Anil Kapoor for calling a spade a spade.
"No Problem will finally be one of the profit-making films of the year, " said Anees, when in truth there were only 15 profit-making films during 2010: Abhishek Choubey's Ishqiya, Karan Johar's My Name Is Khan, Dibakar Banerjee's Love Sex Aur Dhokha, Sajid Khan's Housefull, Prakash Jha's Raajneeti, Punit Malhotra's I Hate Luv Stories, Abhishek Sharma's Tere Bin Laden, Milan Luthria's Once Upon A Time In Mumbaai, Anusha Rizvi's Peepli (Live), Abhinav Kashyap's Dabangg, Shankar's Robot, Rohit Shetty's Gol Maal 3, Maneesh Sharma's Band Baaja Baraat and hopefully Farah Khan's Tees Maar Khan.
This is just enough success for a movie industry that produces nearly 150 Hindi films per year.
Reeling under the impact of the failures the Mumbai studios wear a deserted look at the end of the year. Shailendra Singh the Managing Director of Percept Pictures who organizes the year-end non-stop New Years eve event in Goa called the Sunburn Festival admits that this year the volume of Bollywood stars heading to Goa is much higher than other years.
Says Singh, "I guess there has been a very high level of failures and it has impacted the industry.We expect an unusually large turn-out of stars at the Sunburn festival this year.
We've organized everything at the Festival from the usual year-end activities like singing dancing and merry making to just relaxing, taking body massages, watching movies, etc. Hopefully Bollywood would return rejuvenated with a better report card next year."