MPW 2023: How Oscar winner Guneet Monga Kapoor balances financial and creative processes while making films

In Guneet Monga Kapoor’s twinkly eyes, all you see is love. She is unapologetically and self-admittedly in a one-sided love affair with her stories. “I’m head over heels in the service of the story, so I make sure that my love for that story opens its own doors to the world,” says the two-time Oscar-winning producer, who has made a comeback on the BT Most Powerful Women in Business list for the first time since 2019.

For someone who has made over 35 movies, she still exhibits the optimism of a newcomer. “Even though I’ve been around for 15 years [in this industry], it feels like I just got started,” she says. As someone who’s at the helm of both creative and financial processes, Kapoor often finds the right balance between the two and has become one of the most successful producers in the business. “We work in a 100 per cent equity industry. So, it’s important to me that my investors see the money so that I can make my next film. All my films have made money. In our commercial boundaries, we want to make all the money while breaking the glass ceiling,” she said.

With Academy Award-winning films like Period. End of Sentence. and The Elephant Whisperers, and Pagglait, etc., Kapoor wants to bring the female-first conversation to the centre stage. “I’m constantly innovating cinema, taking Indian stories to the rest of the world, and also making money. The idea is to know the genre you’re stepping into and have knowledge of your market size. That is the craft of producing,” she said.

Her upcoming film Kill has made a profit even before coming to India. For Kapoor, it’s imperative that she never loses money. “You’ll always be boxed. While making The Lunchbox people told me, who would watch a love story with two old people where the whole movie is in voice-over? Lunchbox is a `10-crore film and has made `100 crore around the world. There is a buyers’ market around the world, and one must break through that. I’ve been nurturing and building those relationships for a decade and a half,” she says.

Going forward, Kapoor wants to continue telling great stories for the rest of the world while reinventing the wheel when it comes to telling local-global stories from India. 

@PLidhoo