The more the merrier seems to be a rule of thumb, at least when it comes to casting for Bollywood extravaganzas.

Directors like Yash Chopra, Subhash Ghai, Rajiv Rai and J.P Dutta to name just four, have consistently gone the multi-starrer way to success. But -- as they will be the first to tell you -- making a film with a plethora of stars isn't exactly a walk in the park.

For starters, there is the dates problem. Getting the heroine and hero together is bad enough -- if you have four or five big stars, then the chances that you will be able to get dates where all of them are free at the same time, and in the same place, are astronomical.

Secondly, casting a star means inviting headaches -- late arrival, tantrums, the works. If you cast four stars, what it means is one headache multiplied by four. Plus a few additional ones -- like say one star demanding something simply because the other star has it too, stars squabbling about whose image should get the most prominence on publicity posters, et al.

As against that, there is one advantage. Each star has a fan following, which in box office terms translates into an initial. So the more stars, the more the film-maker is certain of an initial run.

At least, that is how it works in theory. In practise, big-budget multi-starrers of the order of Kshatriya, Parampara and Trimurti to name just three failed to create even a mild ripple at the box office. As against that, the likes of Waqt, Tridev, Hum Saath Saath Hai and Border proved to be big draws on the basis of their star-studded cast.

Bottomline? Like pretty much everything else in Bollywood, a multi-star extravaganza is a gamble -- admittedly, a bigger gamble than most.

So here's a run-through, of multi-starrers down the years

Text: Sukanya Verma