India, Feb. 8 -- The pandemic brought to the mainstream knowledge of film budgets, box-office collections, and niche terms like overhead costs and recovery. Suddenly, everyone on Twitter and Reddit was a box office expert. But expertise or not, any follower of Indian cinema could see the wide divide between the haves and the have-nots. The bigger films with superstars had crores at their disposal for marketing and publicity. Ironically, the smaller films, which actually needed the marketing push, found themselves struggling to fund it.

Varun Gupta of Max Marketing has helped sell films both big and small. His portfolio boasts Baahubali and Dhurandhar, as well as HanuMan, an unheralded Telugu superhero film that grossed over Rs.300 crore ...