Is Hollywood Posing a Threat to Bollywood?

With increasing revenues at the Indian box office, Hollywood is looming large as a warning to Bollywood

After Furious 7, Avengers: Age of Ultron has done remarkable business at the Indian box office. And this has been a concurrent trend. Hollywood which was limited in scope earlier has gone up phenomenally with good weekends and credible releases in the past few years.

This Avengers sequel was the most anticipated English movie of the year and Marvel’s Avengers franchise just keeps getting bigger with each movie release here. What’s really a big win for us is that our marketing focus was also on the Hindi audience and the movie’s got a great response from the Hindi audience and regions
– Amrita Pandey (VP and Head of Distribution and Marketing, Studios, Disney India)

If we look at the way Hollywood films are coming to our theatres, the trend is obviously changing. What started with Jurassic Park (1993) and Independence Day (1996) is slowly becoming a force to reckon with. Unlike the recent past when Hollywood films used to release only in English, studios have gradually started releasing their big ticket films dubbed in major Indian regional languages like Hindi, Tamil and Telugu which in turn makes the audience base very big. This is one of the primary factors how equations are changing in movie exhibitions. Avengers sequel for example did astonishingly well with its dubbed Hindi version especially in the smaller centres like Gorakhpur, Ujjain, and Chhattisgarh.

Hollywood franchise films are always looked forward by the Indian audience. Avengers and Fast & Furious franchises are doing terrific business, so is the case with other franchises like Transformers, Mission Impossible, Batman, Superman, Spiderman and other superhero movies. I think Bollywood is already feeling the heat from their foreign counterpart
– Girish Johar (Film business expert)

However, a larger part of the industry still believes that Hollywood’s penetration of Hindi and other regional market will take a long time. Considering Hollywood films are made primarily for audiences who speak English, it poses a great barrier for the Indian mass to connect to the culture which is way different from theirs, and essentially how they view entertainment. That’s why Hindi and other regional film industries are flourishing in India despite Hollywood presence, the big brother that has destroyed indigenous film cultures in many countries of the world.

I wouldn’t call it a threat. There has been a lull, no big budget Bollywood films released in this period, so Hollywood helped keeping the multiplex habit on. I can see big winners in future releases like Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation and the new Bond film
– Devang Sampat (Head-Strategic Initiatives, Cinepolis)

All said and done, big Hollywood franchises do affect the Hindi film business, at least smaller and medium budget films, if not star vehicles. “The only way to fight it is to make good films powered by good stories. Good content that is up to date will always work well at the box office,” adds Johar. So Watch out Bollywood, and step up your game!