Hollywood Cinema in India

Magic of Hollywood

India is the next big market for Hollywood’s film industry. There was never a doubt whatsoever that Hollywood film industry and their studios were always expansionist so there is hardly any surprise if they have captured BBC and other international news media in most European, American countries and to some extent Asian countries.

India has a vast market but over 1 billion cine goers with little over 13000 cinema screens. Although we are far behind from other countries at availability of cinema screen but taking into account the number of cine goers the Hollywood is targeting India in a big way. There is no secret in the fact that Hollywood earns more than 60% of its revenue from international market and India is one big contributor.

Look at the fact that in last decades the Hollywood would release their movies in 400 or so cinema halls but recently the number has gone well past 2000 screens. For instance the movie ‘Jurassic world’ was released in 2300 cinemas and the release of movie scared Indian producers as much as they did not dare release any movie few weeks before or after the release of Jurassic World. And the ones which released could barely cover their production cost only.

There are other examples in recent years which show that Hollywood movies did well at box office in India like Jurassic World crossed INR 1.5 billion (US$23 million) within weeks. Even this year three movies from Hollywood have crossed $15 million so far. The way movies like ‘Fast and Furious’, ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’ has done on box office in India it should be an encouraging sign for Hollywood producers.

Smaller movies are worst hit

The big budget Bollywood movies are least affected by release of Hollywood movies as the big budget movies have a better strategy on capturing the cinema screen well in advance but the low budget Indian movies that are unable to stand the challenge of grabbing the theaters in advance have to do with lesser number of screens and in this process are left much behind in the race. So the small budget movies even with a better story idea and better acting are the worst suffered lot. And if these movies are released during IPL, the cricketing fever their chances of survival are further reduced.

Hollywood has its own Charisma

The fact that Hollywood is far ahead in action, animation, and fiction that puts them far ahead of our movies which is one of the reasons that Indian cinema halls prefer Hollywood to Bollywood. There is no extra revenue sharing to Cineplex owners but if the movies from Hollywood are doing better business in shorter period than there is no reason to blame Indian Cineplex owners.  However the fact that India needs more cinema screens immediately as we are perhaps the only country which has the least number of cinema halls and screens according to number of cine-goers in India.

Besides technique, Hollywood is far ahead in marketing strategy for instance the Hollywood is targeting Indian audience by releasing their cinema one week before in India than in other parts of the world the examples are ‘Jungle Book’ and ‘Independence Day: Resurgence’.