Aamir’s Dangal wins him a superstar status in neighbouring China
new delhi — Aamir Khan is fast on his way to becoming a superstar in of all places, China.
His latest offering, Dangal, which collected over Rs3 billion in India, is setting a record of sorts in Beijing as well. Dangal opened on May 5; twenty-four hours later it had grossed over Rs200 million. The reviews have been rave, too.
Aamir’s earlier movie PK had collected Rs57 million on the opening day in China. That is roughly one-fourth of the present collection, but PK went on to gross over Rs1 billion. Dangal, according to trade pundits, should do better.
The publicity campaign for the movie was carefully engineered. Aamir and his team spent a week in China in April promoting the film. They travelled to Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu, holding events in the middle of milling audiences. The film opened to 7,000 screens. By comparison PK had been screened only in 3,000 screens.
On China’s most popular cinema portals, Dangal has been uniformly applauded. On social media app WeChat, the movie enjoys the highest rating among films currently being shown in China with a 9.8 score out of 10.
There is a threat though from China’s protective cinema operator, Wanda. Wanda believes Dangal will hurt the interests of the local movies. Wanda cinemas have a near monopoly in the smaller cities and towns of China. Wanda says its will cut down Dangal screenings to less than 50 in interior China. This will affect the movie’s collective earnings, but the big cities would have done the good deed for Aamir.
Despite Wanda’s lack of interest in the film, a number of Chinese celebrities have come out to promote the film. Actor Deng Chao posted a message on the Chinese Twitter-equivalent, Sina Weibo, telling fans to watch it, while ac- tress Liu Yifei promoted the film along with Aamir during his visit.
“I give full marks to Dangal,” wrote another fan. “I was touched that I cried so much and when I ran out of tissue, I borrowed two pieces from a stranger beside me, I am going to watch it again and again.”
Of late there has been a upsurge in the popularity of Indian mythological dramas and other TV serials from India despite the fact IndoChina relations are in a downward spiral.
The TV dramas Naagin, Devon Ke Dev Mahadev, the 2013 series Mahabharat, and Buddhaa-Rajaon Ka Raja have all been subtitled into Chinese and viewed by hundreds of thousands of people online. On one of China’s widely used videosharing websites, Bilibili, the first four episodes of Naagin’s second season had near 200,000 views. Viewers have created subtitles by translating them from available English or and sometimes Russian subtitles.