Bollywood's Kings

Crime, Celebrity, and Kissing On Screen: A Q&A on The King of Bollywood;

But a combination of factors transformed Bollywood. A key event was the arrival of multiplexes in 1997. Prior to that, Hindi cinema usually played in 1000-seat halls, leaving no outlets for smaller, niche films — if you couldn’t fill a hall that large, you were, financially speaking, dead on arrival. Multiplexes offered filmmakers a chance to speak exclusively to educated, urban Indians who, thanks to liberalization and the ensuing affluence, didn’t hesitate before spending 200 rupees ($5) on a movie ticket. The high ticket prices (single-screen theaters, by contrast, only cost 40 to 80 rupees, or $1 to $2) then made smaller films financially viable. This created what we call “The Multiplex Film” (essentially the equivalent of the Hollywood Indie film).

At the same time, the overseas market (the 20-million odd non-resident Indians residing outside of India) also became a source of revenue. Now, if a film was successful in urban India and overseas, it made far more money than if it was a success in the Indian heartland, where the ticket prices were still comparatively low. At the same time, a new generation of younger, slicker filmmakers entered cinema and started to cater to these new, more sophisticated markets. The result was a more polished Bollywood product. Films were better crafted, and directors no longer tried to appeal to the lowest common denominator.

Today, Bollywood is a corporate entity. The industry is overrun by educated, thirty-something filmmakers who are attempting to redefine what makes a Bollywood film. Since the returns on movies have increased tenfold, legitimate investors are no longer hard to find. Many Bollywood studios are listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange, and several large corporations have bought into them. Even Hollywood wants a piece of the action — Sony Pictures Entertainment and Warner Bros. are currently co-producing Hindi movies.

*The video above is from Old Bollywood