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Guru of the box office

Sonia Chopra

Three years ago, Gitesh Pandya had the perfect job as broadcast manager for the CBS television network, a position he had worked up to from the company's finance department. He was very happy at his four-year-old job, but he discovered that he was happiest when pursuing his hobby of researching and analyzing the Hollywood box office.

His friends told him he was an expert at it. Pandya knew that was true and realized the potential of the Internet before it had become commonplace. So he quit his full-time, high-paying job and created his own Web site. The name was as bold and innovative as his idea --boxofficeguru.com

"I named it guru for two reasons. Guru symbolises both an all-knowing resource and looking into the future," says Pandya, 28, who analyses the American box office and how it works, both in the United States and overseas.

Pandya has spent more than half his life tracking movies, gathering data, writing his analysis and learning about the way the movie industry works, just for himself.

"For me, this was just a natural extension of my hobby. I used to write all this analysis and I just thought it would be interesting to see if people read it," says Pandya, who lives in Clifton, New Jersey, just minutes away from Manhattan, one of the pillars of the movie industry.

They did. The Web site caters to a very mixed group of studio heads, industry professionals, students and other analysts.

The ordinary movie buff gives a quick glance at any newspaper and satisfies the need to know when and where the upcoming weekend movie is playing. And looks for reviews. But there are others for whom movies are a hobby or a business and want specific answers to questions like: How will it fare at the box office? What are the projections? What kind of marketing did the studio do? For a final analysis, boxofficeguru.com is the Web site that half a million people turn to in spring. At the time of summer releases, this number goes up to 700,000 or more hits a month.

"It's a cyclical business. It depends on the films, the seasons, etc. And this is what I do best," Pandya said.

Boxofficeguru.com also includes a database on the performance of every single movie released since 1989. It can tell you the number of theatres in which a film was released and how much it grossed.

"It's reliable, unbiased, complete research and the finished product speaks for itself," he says.

The business is fascinating because of its unpredictability.

"It's not a mundane arena. It has a lot of surprises. Sometimes I am wrong and sometimes I am not. Every weekend is different," says Pandya, who is regularly requested by Fox News Channel, USA Today and Hollywood.com for his box-office analyses.

He gives an example: John Travolta's movie, Battlefield Earth, was just released last weekend. The fact that Gladiator with Russell Crowe has a similar theme could hurt the movie and people may skip the former for the latter, or maybe not. And in fact, Gladiator doubled the sales of Battlefield Earth last weekend.

An economics graduate from Drew University in New Jersey, Pandya designed the Web site himself. Today, it earns enough advertising revenue to pay for itself.

Pandya learnt all he needed to know about computers to incorporate his company. "I am not a hardcore technical person. I use the Internet as a tool to project my work," he says.

Working on one's own, Pandya has discovered, is harder in one aspect: no free time. "Every single day, I have to work. Days off do not exist."

He explains his expertise. "The more you do something, the better you get at it. You become more experienced, you become a veteran. You gain respect and credibility and people come to you."

He doesn't do the Bollywood box-office. "To do this, you have to be an expert and I can't claim to be one where Bollywood is concerned. I don't track it enough," he says.

Pandya was born in Long Island, New York, where his father Dinker, a scientist, and mother Madhu, now in their sixties, immigrants from India, had first settled. After a while, the family moved to New Jersey. Today, Pandya, his brother Piyush, 32, a computer consultant, and his retired parents, all live within minutes of one another.

Though born in the USA, Pandya cherishes his Indian heritage. "I feel pride when I see my name attached to any analysis in the newspaper. People are forced to deal with it. They say, 'that's an interesting name, wonder what his background is'," smiles Pandya.

"I love my work and I want to take it all the way to the end zone. I take life as it comes," he says of his philosophy.

To read about upcoming movies and Pandya's analysis, please go to www.boxofficeguru.com

Next: 'To be honoured means to feel somewhat assured of the legitimacy of what you are doing'

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