THE CURIOUS CASE OF HOLLYWOOD IN INDIA

English films in the country ride largely on famous superheroes or spies, but desis still bat for Bollywood

In May this year, actor Amitabh Bachchan lamented in a press conference that “Hollywood has destroyed local film industries”. And he may have had reason to complain. Avengers: Infinity War earned ₹312 crore in India while Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible: Fallout made ₹112 crore. But closer inspection of Hollywood’s impact in countries with wellestablished film industries where English is not the primary language, shows it was much greater in Italy, France, South Korea and China, than India.

Sample this: Steven Spielberg’s sci-fi adventure Ready Player One, earned a total of ₹3,175 crore in the foreign box office, including ₹1,565 crore in China, but just above ₹4 crore in India.

SUPERHEROES, SPIES RULE SMALL TOWNS

“In smaller towns, people prefer Hindi films over English. Hollywood packs theatres only in case of popular franchises such as Avengers or James Bond, as people are familiar with the characters,” says trade analyst Atul Mohan.

It seems to make sense if one looks at numbers of movies based on relatively new superheroes. Tom Hardy’s Venom made ₹136 crore in France and ₹216 crore in South Korea. But in India, it only grossed ₹41.2 crore. Another superhero film, Black Panther, which released earlier this year, made ₹4,991 crore at the foreign box office, of which ₹236 crore was from France, ₹305 crore from South Korea and only ₹76 crore from India, or 1.5% of the total earnings.

NUMBER OF SCREENS MATTER

Box-office collections also depend on the number of screens a film receives. The Incredibles 2, which broke records for an animation film in India, earned ₹54 crore here after it was released on 925 screens. Avengers: Infinity War, with double the number of screens — 2,000 — earned six times more.

“An Avengers or James Bond movie will be dubbed in different languages. If you take the sum total of that, 2,000 screens get booked for such films. But for smaller films, the number of screens is 200300,” says movie distributor Sanjay Ghai. “In Rajasthan, a film like James Bond will work because people know about it and some 50-60 screens get booked in the state alone. But for a smaller film, the number drops to 20 or 25 screens,” says Sanjay Chatar, a movie distributor from Rajasthan.

Interestingly, Indian actors featuring in Hollywood films don’t matter much to Indian audiences either. In a recent interview, actor Ali Fazal, who starred in Victoria & Abdul (2017), which was nominated for the 2018 Oscars, expressed disappointment as it earned a mere ₹1.65 crore in India despite doing well outside the country. “Victoria & Abdul ran in India for six days — I knew this would happen. But even then, I did feel bad, because (India is my) home,” he told us.

Yet, some believe Hollywood has indeed arrived. “It has certainly arrived. If you look at films such as Fast and Furious, you will realise these blockbusters have started doing well in India as well. Yes, people don’t go to watch a majority of other films, but India is as curious about the superheroes and the super spies, as the rest of the world is,” concludes trade analyst Komal Nahta.

still from Mission ImpossibleFallout (above) and Incredibles 2 (inset)

A still from Rampage (left) and a still from Avengers: Infinity War (below right)

The figures have been taken from Box Office Mojo and the production houses of the respective films.