‘RRR’ and the rise of South Asian movies at Houston multiplexes
Eye-popping success of the film underscores how a loyal ‘niche’ audience can aid Hollywood’s post-COVID bottom line
Quickly, name the biggest hit movies of 2022 so far.
“Top Gun: Maverick” and “Jurassic World Dominion,” predictably, come to mind, but there’s one on the list unknown to many American moviegoers. S.S. Rajamouli’s “RRR” — a three-hour-plus wild ride of fiery combat, lunging animals, rage against the colonial machine and a danceoff — made a big splash at the global box office upon its release on March 24, raking in $65 million that weekend, coming in third in the U.S. and second in the U.K.
The fantastical, period-piece epic, whose name is an acronym for the far more bloodthirsty “Rise! Roar! Revolt!,” went on to rake in upward of $150 million worldwide and is now streaming on Netflix. But it’s not as widely known in North America as its counterparts because the Telugu-language Indian film was largely marketed to those who already follow South Asian cinema.
“RRR” may be an anomaly — anticipation for the film was running so high that the mere screening of the trailers caused pandemonium in some theaters, as the internet gleefully documented — but it also might represent a tipping point of sorts for Bollywood (or “Tollywood” as movies in Telugu are sometimes called) moviegoing in the U.S., as more multiplexes are now programming South Asian movies on a regular basis.
“As the South Asian fan base has grown, the markets where we are seeing this demand has also increased,” says Justin McDaniel, Cinemark’s senior vice president of Global Content via email. “And we adjusted our distribution strategy accordingly.”
For Houston engineer Shehbaz Tejani, a fan of South
Asian films, this is welcome news. “I’ve noticed that there was an increase in Indian movies at the AMCs,” he says. “Especially since some of those movies are being dubbed in multiple Indian languages.”
Growing population
Part of this shift is fueled by demographic changes, with the U.S. Census Bureau reporting an overall Asian population of 20.6 million in 2020, up from 11.9 million in 2000. The advocacy group South Asian Americans Leading Together, or SAALT, estimates there are 5.4 million people of South Asian descent in the U.S. (South Asia generally refers to the countries of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the Maldives. The bulk of the movies come from India and Pakistan.)
The shift is especially evident in Houston, where, a few years ago, South Asian films generally could be found mostly on the west and southwest side at the AMC First Colony 24 in Sugar Land, AMC Loews Fountains 18 in Stafford and the now shuttered AMC Studio 30 in west Houston. Flash forward to summer 2022, and they are being booked throughout the region from the Cinemark 18 in Webster to the south and the Regal Greenway Grand Palace 24 inside the Loop, to AMC Tinseltown 290 in northwest Houston and Cinemark 17 in The Woodlands to the north.
Josh Hurtado, a longtime fan and festival programmer of South Asian films, founded Richardson-based Potentate films, one of the companies involved in the June rerelease of “RRR” in some indie/arthouse theaters. He sees the shift in other parts of Texas as well.
“A lot of the (South Asian) workers who have immigrated here are moving to the suburbs, and a lot of theaters are going in that direction also,” Hurtado says. “Once you get to north Plano, Frisco, Farmers Branch, Lewisville, there are a lot more theaters catering to that audience.”
It’s not uncommon now for South Asian movies in major markets to open on nearly as many screens as their Englishlanguage brethren. “RRR,” for example, opened on 1,200 screens in the U.S., the same week that “Infinite Storm,” starring Naomi Watts, opened on 1,500 screens.
But there’s more to it than demographics. Tearlach Hutcheson, vice president for the Texas-based Studio Movie Grill chain, says not to forget the lingering effects of the pandemic.
“We’re seeing these phenomenal grosses for these films like ‘Minions,’ ‘Top Gun,’ ‘Jurassic World,’ ” he says. “But once again, we’re missing about 20 percent of the film content that we truly need to be back to pre-pandemic levels. So the Indian films are getting more of a play because there are screens available for them.”
“When viewed in terms of COVID-era box office, ‘RRR’s’ success is another example of how theaters may become more dependent, especially in nontentpole seasons, on demographically specific event films,” movie-industry reporter Scott Mendelson wrote in Forbes in March. “In a time when even fewer moviegoers show up in theaters for nontentpole flicks, and when fewer movies qualify as ‘must-see’ theatrical events, the likes of ‘RRR’ are appealing to folks who otherwise wouldn’t be driving out to the cinema at all.”
Not yet crossing over
Of course, this isn’t the first upsurge in Western interest in films from Asia, going back to the work of Japanese director Akira Kurosawa in the ’50s and Hong Kong martial-arts movies in the ’70s and ’80s. There was also a boom for Chinese period pieces such as “Raise the Red Lantern” and “Farewell My Concubine” in the ’90s, as well as Hong Kong crime films and action-comedies (think Jackie Chan) during the same period. They were followed by a wave of Japanese horror and anime in the ’90s/2000s and South Korean dramas today.
The South Asian films that opened in the U.S. this year run the gamut from romantic comedies (“Badhaai Do”) to sports dramas (“Jersey”) and action-thrillers (“K.G.F. Chapter 2”) to political thrillers (“Anek”). India has the world’s largest film industry, cranking out 1,500-2,000 movies per year in more than 20 languages. However, in the U.S., South Asian films have yet to reach the same level of crossover as films from other Asian countries.
“Just from my anecdotal experience, I haven’t seen a lot of people coming into those Indian films that are not from the community,” says Hurtado. “Once in awhile, something might cross over a little bit with the cinephile audience, like ‘RRR.’ That’s totally an outlier.”
Hutcheson agrees. “Japanese anime has really found a foothold in the U.S. and is growing and has a built-in audience,” he says. “The issue that Indian films have is, I don’t think that they’re building an audience outside of the Indian community.”
But Cinemark’s McDaniel spies an opening.
“There may be some crossover appeal on some of the bigger titles, like ‘RRR,’ ” he says. “We have seen, time and time again, that great storytelling connects with people of all ages and cultures, and these South Asian films are no exception. Although moviegoers of the South Asian culture have initially helped to build the anticipation, positive word of mouth has allowed these types of films to pique the interest and capture the attention across demographics.”
Tejani appreciates the newfound attention but also has concerns. “I think more visibility is good, especially if it pushes original storytelling,” he says. “The negative is that now the regional movies will start catering to a bigger audience. This might cause some regional cultural aspects of the film to be downplayed.”
Hurtado is hopeful that others will discover South Asian cinema, as he did in the early 2000s.
“There was this big, Indiashaped hole in my moviegoing knowledge,” he recalls. “They make 2,000 movies a year, and I’d never seen any of them. … I gambled on a few and kind of fell in love at that point. It was just out of curiosity at the beginning and then realizing that there is a huge, almost completely unexplored, film culture in the world that a lot of people really don’t pay attention to.”