By Surendra Bhatia
The World In Avengers’ Pockets
Avengers: Endgame has remorselessly conquered the world, like no movie before. It has pulled in, unbelievably, $1.2 billion worldwide in the opening three/four/five-day weekend itself! Films with a billion-dollar lifetime earnings are rare; this one has hit and shot over the mark in the first weekend! It hauled in over $350 million in North America and, breath needs to be held, a stunning $859 million across the Overseas markets out of which the Chinese markets contributed an astounding $330 million – and all this in just the opening weekend. Where the lifetime tally will end up is anybody’s guess but without a doubt, Avengers: Endgame is one of the greatest, one of the biggest and one of the most awesome box-office hits ever.
Avengers: Endgame has smashed almost all Indian box-office records too. It pulled in over Rs. 50 crore each on the opening Friday and the Saturday and Sunday that followed, taking its weekend haul to over Rs. 150 crore. Avengers: Endgame ended the first week with collections of over Rs. 260 crore, which is one of the highest ever for any film in India. The film released on 2,845 screens across the country and was dubbed in three languages – Hindi, Tamil and Telugu, but the number of shows played on each screen was much higher than normal. In some cinemas where the demand was intense and immense, screening began at 3 o’clock in the morning and the last show started almost at midnight. Indian cinemas have not seen this kind of pan-India craze for a movie ever before, certainly not for an Indian film. Avengers: Endgame has served up a cinematic lesson that all film industries across the world, and, of course, India, need to learn and emulate. Scale may not be everything in cinema but when it is served up in such style, it is exhilarating beyond words.
However, the unimaginable craze Avengers: Endgame has set off across the globe is not the work of a single film. It is not as if a one-off film came along and impressed cinema audiences and went on to become a global phenomenon. The momentous collections of Avengers: Endgame are culmination of a series of its franchise films, one more impressive than the other, and the steady increase in its fan base and reach that has resulted in overwhelming audience support for this particular movie. The build-up for Avengers: Endgame has been spread over 11 years and 22 films of the franchise, with each of its many superheroes – Iron Man, Captain America, Hulk, Black Widow, Thor and Hawkeye – pitching in with their own loyal, carefully cultivated constituencies, that have now coalesced into historic box-office collections. Individually too, all these superhero characters have had their own stand-alone films, which have also been highly successful, though, obviously, not on such a scale.
India has no such parallels, though multi-starrers could serve as crude examples. Sholay, for instance, brought in fan bases of its many stars – Dharmendra, Amitabh Bachchan, Hema Malini, Jaya Bhaduri – and this helped in the film’s long and lucrative run. Bollywood’s franchise films, such as they are, do not even exist in comparison to the Avengers series. The Dhoom and Dhamaal kind of franchises are run-of-the-mill films masquerading under a familiar title, while Rohit Shetty’s Singham series is basically a collection of police dramas, much like a police series from US television. It can hardly be called a franchise. Mahesh Bhatt, years earlier, pulled a fast one by creating ‘title franchise’, with films sharing the same title with a suffix, but quite unrelated in content. These so-called film franchises in India are always accidents, a greedy impulse to exploit and carry on one film’s success to the next.
India has hardly any films that led themselves to the franchise concept. John Matthew Mathan made a lovely film two decades back with Aamir Khan – Sarfarosh – which had the potential to grow into a franchise, but he couldn’t sell the next edition’s story or concept to his hero. Maybe, the main handicap is the lack of superheroes. Most of Hollywood franchise films are based on superheroes, as the superhero concept has been dinned into its populace through comics since last seven-eight decades. The comic culture is unique to the US, and the idea that Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, Captain America, Iron Man, Wonder Woman would arrive just in time to save the world with their superpowers is ingrained in the American people. Even before television was invented, comics and comic strips in newspapers promoted this culture of superheroes so its mutation later into television series and films was natural.
India, too, has a culture of superheroes but it has never been looked at seriously by filmmakers. In fact, the entire Indian history, or mythology, as it is referred to, is packed with superheroes, right from Ravan to Hanuman to Karna. Hanuman, for instance, could have been built into a cult figure in cinema, much the way he is in the minds of Indians, but Indian film industries have never given it a serious thought. Hanuman could have had a modern version, as reincarnation is an ongoing strong belief amongst Indians, but filmmakers here don’t think that far. Their concerns have rarely gone beyond their next film. Franchises are created, at least in Hollywood, after a great deal of introspection and research, investment and storyboarding at least three instalments before the first goes into production. Hollywood focuses on franchises because the revenues usually grow with each instalment, and they have strong merchandising options to generate further revenues. They think long term, three films in seven years, which helps them look at a franchise in totality. Here, in Bollywood, even A-list stars have little idea of what they would be shooting beyond their next film.
Yet, without a doubt, superhero concept is the one Bollywood should look at more seriously. Unfortunately, in Bollywood, A-listers are considered superheroes at the box-office, and producers don’t seem to care to look beyond that. Yes, Rakesh Roshan has attempted a superhero franchise with his son, Hrithik, playing Krrish in two films, and it has been fairly successful. But it is not a sustained franchise. It would have been so wonderful if Rakesh Roshan had created other superheroes in the Krrish films and made spin-offs; but the entire raison d’etre of Krrish films seems to be to prop up his son. Now another superhero film is underway, apparently. Karan Johar’s Bhramastra, starring Ranbir Kapoor, has been in production for some time and, according to reports, production has not been as organised as it ought to have been but that is all for later. Hopefully, Bhramastra will prove to be a super-hit and Ranbir will go further as superhero than Hrithik has done.
Darna Zaroori Hai…
If Bollywood were human, it would be an aged spinster, living alone, scared of her own shadows, unable to sleep at night because of a persistent phobia that the moment she closes her eyes, someone evil would sneak in under her bed and do vile unwelcome things to her. Bollywood too lives in constant fear. For instance, the moment the release date an A-list actor’s film is announced, all other producers unhitch their tents and sneak away to safer environs. The last thing they want is the A-lister’s film to swamp their smaller movie and write its epitaph. Though it has eased a bit in recent times, spines of Bollywood producers quake and tremble when their writers start narrating offbeat themes for their next film. Their minds, like that of the spinster, dream up the worst possible end scenario, which is that critics would give the film a thumbs up but the shows on the opening Friday would be cancelled for lack of audiences. When their film is underproduction, producers eavesdrop on every conversation on their set; if they overhear even a spotboy berating a scene/ shot/heroine’s costume/cinematographer’s lighting, colour of carpet on set, they break into sweat, certain that their stars have changed for the worse and their astrologer has failed to inform them.
So, fear is as ubiquitous in a Bollywood producer’s life as it is in a spinster who lives alone. Now, there’s one additional shadow that has fallen on Bollywood, that is certain to knock sleep off many producers’ agenda, and the looming shadow is that of Hollywood. Producers were smart or fearful enough to steer away noiselessly from the couple of weeks around the release of Avengers: Endgame. They knew in their bones that their films would get slaughtered at the box-office if they surfaced in cinemas to clash with this colossal Hollywood film. And they were right, of course. If it were a one-off instance, they might have been able to catch up on their sleep after a couple of weeks but life has got more complicated. Avengers: Endgame has released and, in a few weeks, it will be gone, but what about the Hollywood films scheduled to release soon?
The list might seem like repeated dagger stabs to Bollywood producers but reality can’t be wished away: Hollywood’s Aladdin releases on May 24; Godzilla II – King Of The Monsters the following week, on May 31; X-Men: Dark Phoenix in the week after, on June 7; Men In Black: International, a week later, on June 14; Toy Story 4, on June 21; Spider-Man: Far From Home, on July 5; The Lion King, on July 19; and, Bollywood’s eyes are shut in fear because the vile stranger has entered the room and is hiding under the bed. On August 22, releases Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw. That is, Hollywood’s eight marquee films, from its biggest franchises, with a track record of massive box-office collections of the previous editions, will release in just 11 weeks! That, for the ones who are not intelligent enough to be fearful, is equivalent of eight A-list actors’ films releasing in 11 weeks! How can any Bollywood producer, who is hoping to release his film in this period, not have sleepless nights?
Hollywood’s conquest of Bollywood is in full gear. Sure, Indian cinema produces the largest number of films but Hollywood needs to release only one potential blockbuster (Spider-Man, Men In Black, Godzilla, Fast & Furious) every two weeks to queer the pitch for Indian producers. It’s fine if Bollywood releases 50 films on a particular Friday but if on the same Friday, Avengers: Endgame is releasing, how do any of those 50 films matter? The list of Hollywood releases in the coming weeks in India is impressive; it could be that not a single one may be able to replicate the incredible success of Avengers: Endgame but what if each of four of them corners just 25% of the box-office collections of Avengers: Endgame? Those four will effectively spell ruin for Bollywood films.
India has always been the last frontier for Hollywood, since China was captured so easily once it started releasing Hollywood films regularly. Hollywood has struggled to make the breakthrough in the Indian market because our audiences wore xenophobic blinkers and didn’t bother about what was not their culture. But Internet, easy access through smart phones and hundreds of 24×7 TV channels including many foreign ones have worn off the blinkers the way an ocean wears off rocks, and now, the view of audiences is 360 degrees instead of narrow chauvinistic, as it was for so many decades. The way the Indian car and truck manufacturers battle established foreign car and truck makers, so will Bollywood have to fight with Hollywood on a near-level playing field.
Will Bollywood win or lose? The jury is still out on this issue. If Bollywood continues the way it has in the last couple of decades, there’s not much hope for it. But if it grows up and gets smart, all is not lost. It should remember that Ramdev’s Patanjali makes the same consumer products that the MNCs do, but by emphasising the Indianness of its products, and basing them on the ancient science of Ayurveda, Patanjali has managed to outwit the MNCs. Perhaps, Bollywood should pick up a trick or two from Swami Ramdev.
