Movie moguls’ spell over a nation fades
The Bollywood formula has lost its allure.
BOLLYWOOD may be broken, and it has itself to blame. That’s the verdict of one of its biggest and brightest stars after the latest flop in a Hindilanguage movie industry that’s long mesmerised Indians, and the world, with its dazzling allsinging, alldancing brand of bigscreen escapism.
‘‘Films are not working — it’s our fault, it’s my fault,’’ Akshay Kumar told reporters last month after his new movie Raksha Bandhan tanked at the box office.
‘‘I have to make the changes, I have to understand what the audience wants.
‘‘I want to dismantle the way I think about what kind of films I should do.’’
Indeed times have changed and Bollywood, a cultural pillar of modern India, is losing its allure.
The rise of streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime during the Covid pandemic has conspired with growing Bollywood fatigue among younger generations. Of the 26 Bollywood releases this year, 20 — or 77% — have been flops, defined as losing half or more of their investment, according to the Koimoi website, which tracks industry data.
That’s about double the failure rate of 39% in 2019, before the pandemic shook up society and forced hundreds of millions of Indians to wean themselves off cinemas — for decades the bastion of Bollywood and its main source of revenue.
Christina Sundaresan (40), a mother of two teenage girls in Mumbai, used to see at least one Bollywood movie a week in the cinema before the pandemic. Now she rarely goes.
‘‘I mean, they are OK to watch when you need a laugh but I would not go to a theatre for them,’’ she said.
‘‘My daughters used to watch every movie with us, but now they’re not interested either — they are very much into Korean shows and series which air on these streaming platforms.’’
They’re not alone in converting to international streaming services, which came to India relatively late — Netflix and Amazon Prime launched in 2016 — offering varied content made in America and Europe, as well as India and elsewhere in Asia.
A quarter of India’s 1.4 billion people now use such services, up from about 12% in 2019 — the figure is expected to hit 31% by 2027.
Indian boxoffice revenues had risen every year for a decade to reach around
$US2 billion in 2019 before slumping during the pandemic — they show little sign of bouncing back.
Ticket sales have fallen every month since March this year, sequentially, industry trackers show.
Revenues from Bollywood films specifically are expected to fall 45% in the JulySeptember quarter versus preCovid levels.
Filmmakers must adapt
Bollywood can no longer take audiences for granted and has to adapt if it hopes to survive and thrive; if film fans, as well as half a dozen industry players including producers, movie distributors and cinema operators are anything to go by.
Four of the executives painted a picture of confusion and worry in the industry as studios released films that were supposed to hit the market before the pandemic struck and consumer taste evolved with the rise of streamers, known in India as OTT or overthetop services.
Producers are racing to rework scripts and considering linking actors’ fees to boxoffice performance instead of handing over an upfront payment, INOX chief programming officer Rajender Singh Jyala said.
‘‘During the pandemic there were no releases, everything was shut and people had a lot of time to watch on OTT and to watch different kinds of content.
‘‘So what would have worked two years ago, that content is not worth today’s time.’’
Indian films rely on cinemas for nearly threequarters of their revenue, researchers at O. P. Jindal Global University near New Delhi found.
By contrast, movies globally draw less than half of their income from box offices, according to data from America’s Motion Picture Association.
Fans of Bollywood, a centuryold institution, said it could evolve to stay relevant.
Recent shifts to better reflect society include the introduction of gay relationships and characters who change their gender, for example.
For New Delhi college student Vaishnavi Sharma, studios simply need to step up their game.
‘‘The storyline is the issue and since the past two years the audience has been exposed to so many new themes, and they have been introduced to new concepts as well, so that is why I guess Bollywood is lacking in that area,’’ she said.
The writing was on the wall last month when a pair of bigbudget movies bombed despite starring two of Bollywood’s boxoffice darlings, Kumar and Aamir Khan.
The poor showing of Kumar’s Raksha Bandhan, about the bond between a brother and his sisters, provoked the actor’s comments about films not working.
Khan’s Laal Singh Chaddha, a remake of 1994 Hollywood hit Forrest Gump, has only made around 560 million rupees in ticket sales — about a quarter of its budget — despite being released on August 11, on the eve of a festive long weekend.
The flops represented steep reversals for the two Alisters — action and comedy favourites whose films have been known to recover all costs within the first week over the years. — Reuters