Bollywood movies set new records in China

BEIJING: Bollywood movies have had a golden run in China over the past year — easily making it the best one for Indian films in this country. The surprise boom began with Aamir Khan’s Dangal last May and continues with Irrfan Khan’s Hindi Medium — a boom that no box office pundit or film critic had predicted or projected as a possibility even a year ago.

Irrfan‘s movie has grossed more than ~165 crore (more than $26 million) here till Friday noon. After Dangal, three films — Secret Superstar, Bajrangi Bhaijaan and Hindi Medium — have done well in China, which is now a lucrative box office frontier for Indian movies.

According to Chinese state media, the Indian movies have contributed to China’s booming box office in the first months of 2018.

“Indian movie Secret Superstar topped the imported movies at the Chinese box office with 746 million yuan ($118 million ). However, it didn’t achieve the success of a predecessor, Dangal, which took 1.29 billion yuan ($200 million ) in 2017,” a state media report said. The Bollywood productions not only took on high-profile Chinese films but Hollywood blockbusters. Besides making pots of money, these four movies garnered much goodwill among urban audiences in China. “The stories in the Indian films are like the stories in China. The Chinese audience could identify with them,” said Tan Zheng , editor of Diangying Yishu

(Film Art) magazine. CHANDIGARH: A day after the Punjab government favoured a court verdict convicting Navjot Singh Sidhu in a 1998 road rage case, the local bodies minister on Friday said he was not consulted by the government before going to the Supreme Court. “You ask Punjab CM (Capt Amarinder Singh) or advocate general (Atul Nanda), as to how they took up the plea in the SC without consulting me,” said a visibly upset Sidhu.

The case was heard on Thursday with the state government favouring the Punjab and Haryana high court verdict convicting and awarding a three-year jail term to Sidhu. On a news channel quoting him saying he was backstabbed by the Punjab government, Sidhu refused to comment.

“Whether I am unhappy, shocked, astonished or hurt is on account of what the government said; my shoulders are strong enough to carry the burden.”