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 highprofile 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.