The Big Picture

As in many parts of the world,across India too Hollywoodevokes a strong emotiveappeal. English may be just one

among 16 major languages spoken in thecountry. But India’s strong movie-going —and movie-making — tradition has ensuredthat Hollywood remains the benchmark forindigenous cinema.

Though every major trend thatHollywood set has been lapped up withgusto by Indian producers, Hollywood tradi-tionally displayed little interest in the Indianmarket. But, now, all that is changing. In aneffort to increase their global revenue earn-ings, Hollywood companies are lookingafresh at business opportunities in India.

Until recently, Hollywood distributioncompanies were content with distributingfilms produced by their US studios and byother producers which they had taken fordistribution. But they have moved from justhandling such English productions to main-line Hindi and regional language films too.

Columbia TriStar has tested threediverse markets. Prime among them is thehuge Hindi cinema, or Bollywood market,with its pan-India appeal. The term‘Bollywood’ is a takeoff on ‘Hollywood’and coined by the Indian film buffs to referto Hindi films made by producers inBombay, the cradle of Indian cinema, nowrenamed Mumbai.

Next was the Punjabi film market —mainly confined to the northern parts ofIndia — and the Bengali film market, whichis centered around eastern India. 20thCentury Fox, for its part, has preferred toconfine itself to distributing Hindi-language,

Bollywood films with their pan-India appeal. While executives of the Hollywood

studios remain tight-lipped about their futureplans to enter the co-production arena, long-time industry watcher, Indira Mirani, editorof Box Office magazine, opines, “I definitelythink that it is a prelude to actually co-production of Indian films. But, then, at thispoint I must emphasise that the money inthe market has to be lucrative enough forthem to actually bother with making a filmthat appeals to Indian sensibilities.”

Though Hollywood is synonymous withcinema, it may come as a surprise that Indiais the biggest producer of films in theworld. India’s largest and most famousbrand of cinema is the Mumbai-basedBollywood film industry, which produced246 Hindi films in 2003 and grossed justover a billion dollars in revenues. Indiaaccounts for 73 per cent of the Asia /Pacific admissions currently estimated at $2870 million. Due to its low-priced tickets,the box office market, though relativelysmall in India, has more than 22 times theadmission in China.

The other large film production centresare the southern cities of Chennai,Hyderabad and Kochi, which cater to audi-ences in the languages of Tamil, Telugu andMalayalam respectively.

To be sure, Bollywood has a long histo-ry, almost a century long. Its affair with thesilver screen began in the silent era withR G Torney and N G Chitre’s 1912 produc-tion Pundalik. The following year, DadaSaheb Phalke produced the first full lengthsilent feature film Raja Harishchandra. Thefirst movie with synchronised talking was in

Hollywood EyesIndian Cinema

The world’s largest movie industry is in the midst of change. It iscorporatising, multiplexing and witnessing the entry of megabucks.Will Hollywood join the party? Shilpa Bharatan-Iyer reports.

BOX OFFICE LEVITATION: Superstar Amitabh Bachchan in his recent film, Kyun Ho Gaya Na

COLUMBIA TRISTAR

4544

HOLLYWOOD.qxd 5/6/2005 10:57 AM Page 44

1931, Ardersher Irani’s Alam Ara. And,then, in 1953, Bollywood embraced colourwith Sohrab Modi’s Jhansi ki Rani.

Bollywood’s hallmark is a kitsch of loveand romance musicals with generousdoses of filial devotion, sacrifices, etc.Such fare is avidly lapped up not only inIndia — where producers of regional cine-ma make clones in their languages — butalso in West Asia, Russia and parts ofAfrica. Even Hollywood has its share of thefaithful; prominent among them beingdirectors Steven Spielberg and BazLuhrmann. The latter paid a memorabletribute to the Bollywood style of filmmak-ing with his acclaimed Moulin Rouge.

Despite the size of the Indian moviebusiness, India remained a stepchild of theHollywood circuit until about four yearsago. Audiences had to wait for a minimumof six months before a major Hollywoodfilm was released in India. Some films tookabout two years to swim through theAtlantic and Indian Oceans.

Hollywood began taking a closer look atIndia some years ago when it had to fightthe 24-hour television channels, and thefriendly neighbourhood video distributor,for eyeballs. The mass television audienceswere clued on to the latest offerings fromHollywood, and began demanding thelatest releases which were now available inconvenient VCD/DVD format, thanks tothe progress of technology.

So, to survive, Hollywood majors wereforced to rework their somnolent businessstrategies. To cash in on the worldwidehype a release generates at the time of itscommercial release, they began bringingmajor releases to India just a few weeksafter their worldwide launch. Now, severalreleases, such as the recent MatrixRevolutions, are routinely launched in Indiaalongside the rest of the world.

After streamlining their imports anddistribution network, Hollywood compa-nies decided to enlarge their share of theentertainment market revenues. While theywere hitherto releasing Hollywood films inthe original English version, the humon-gous market in Hindi and other regionallanguages remained untapped. Sensing amarket opportunity, the Hollywood compa-nies have begun releasing their films inseveral dubbed languages.

These dubbed versions have proved tobe extremely popular with the non-Englishspeaking masses of India. And their wide

COLUMBIA TRISTAR

RAKING IN THE RUPEES: The Hindi poster of Spider-man 2 which was a blockbuster in India

46

HOLLYWOOD.qxd 5/6/2005 10:57 AM Page 46

appeal has resulted in enhanced box officerevenues. Columbia TriStar, which handlesthe distribution for all Sony pictures, hit paydirt with multi-lingual versions of the block-buster Spiderman. It raked in revenues of $ 6 million. This was much more thanrevenues from English prints. Its sequelSpiderman 2 grossed $ 7.44 million.Similarly, Godzilla — one of the early multi-lingual releases — also grossed over$ 6 million.

Apart from commerce, there have beenother reasons also for the discovery of

India by Hollywood. Among them has beenthe fact that, in the past three years,several moviemakers who were hithertorunning private fiefdoms, decided to corpo-ratise their operations and go public.Companies like Mukta Arts — headed byhelmsman Subhash Ghai who has beenfamous for his extravaganzas — and whohas consistently produced good films, wentin for an IPO. Sahara Media Communica-tions, K Sera Sera Productions, Lucky StarEntertainment are other corporate players.

The face of the business has alsochanged with business houses investing inthe production of films. An associatecompany of the $ 6 billion Tata Group

produced two films in 2003. Now, thethird largest business group in the coun-try, the $ 2.5 billion A V Birla group’sApplause Entertainment, will soon beproducing its maiden venture, SanjayLeela Bhansali’s Black.

If film production has seen a qualitativechange, so has the last link in the chain —exhibition. With land prices in cities rocket-ing, theatres have given way for multi-screen cinemas, or multiplexes. These havesmaller seating capacities and have, inturn, spawned the production of films forniche audiences.

Such developments have resulted inmany young first-time movie directors blaz-ing their small-scale endeavours on thesilver screen — a scene not far removed

from the efforts of independent film-makersin Hollywood in the ‘50s, which broke thestranglehold of the large movie studios inthe business.

The radical change in the movie-makingbusiness in India is being closely watchedby the Hollywood companies; indeed, theyare participants in the process of change.The projection is that by 2025, the largestaudiences in the world will be in China andIndia. And India already has more speakersof the English language than any country.Speculation has been rife that the Holly-wood majors will soon get into co-produc-tions in India. Yet, they are tight-lipped ontheir future plans.

While actual co-production activitiesmight take time to fructify, there are strawsin the wind. Harvey Weinstein of Miramaxvisited Gurinder Chadda as she was shoot-ing her Bride and Prejudice. While this partof his visit is well known, what was keptunder wraps was the tête-à-tête Weinsteinhad with director Karan Johar; the manbehind India’s two biggest blockbusters inas many years — Kuch Kuch Hota Hai andKabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham.

As a visiting PR man from Los Angeles,Rex Weiner, said “Nothing Weinstein doesis ever done quietly or without reason.”

IN A COUNTRY where movie watching isalmost a religion, theatres in cities weregoing to seed in the past decade as itwas becoming uneconomical to maintainthem. Most cinema halls, which were

built in the 1940-50s, had lost theirappeal to the more sophisticated andupwardly mobile generation whichpreferred smart theatres with eating andother entertainment facilities. It was a

complete going-out experience that theywere now seeking. Enter the new brigade, such as Adlabs, atraditional film processing unit which hasgone public, and film production compa-ny Shringar. They have built multiplexeswith several amusement options; sogoing to the multiplex becomes acomplete family experience and so muchmore fun than mere movie watching.Currently, Mumbai has 38 multiplexscreens.Along with these smaller capacity multi-plexes has came the opportunity to makemovies for smaller niche audiences. Thiskind of film — made in a tighter budgetand time frame — caters primarily tosensibilities of a metro audience.Multiplex cinema has given fresh direc-tors, and actors, the opportunity toexplore different themes. Multiplex cine-ma often depends on content rather thanstar-power to pull in audiences.

THE MULTIPLEX PHENOMENON

CATERING TO NICHE METRO AUDIENCES: Mumbai’s new Inox multiplex

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2003 2004E 2005F 2007F2006F

US$

Milli

on

E- estimate F-forecast

2500

115510001334

15411780

Filmland’s Revenues

Source: Industry estimates

48

HOLLYWOOD.qxd 5/6/2005 10:57 AM Page 48