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First, it was DreamWorks Animation’s Trolls World Tour, distributed by Universal, which released in Indian cinemas. The second English flick to hit the screens in India was Korean film Peninsula. Tomorrow, Warner Bros.’ Tenet will arrive in the cinema halls across India. Warner will follow that up with its $200-million offering, Wonder Woman 1984, on 24th December.
While Hollywood seems to have embraced the new normal and is releasing films theatrically in India, Bollywood seems to still be apprehensive, which explains the lack of new Hindi film releases in cinemas. Suraj Pe Mangal Bhari opened in Indian cinemas on 15th November on the occasion of Diwali. The next Hindi film worth talking about will be Indoo Ki Jawani which will release on 11th December. There’s no other Hindi film that’s been announced for theatrical release so far.
Does that mean that while Hollywood is willing to take risks, Bollywood isn’t? That Bollywood has locked itself in a safety net which it does not want to come out of? Although this may seem to be the case, it is not wholly true if one understands that for Hollywood films, India is not the primary market whereas in the case of big Bollywood films like Sooryavanshi and 83, India is the main market. If Hollywood studios are taking a risk as far as releasing their films in Indian cinemas is concerned, this can be the major reason that the total revenues from Indian theatres won’t be so substantial that if footfalls don’t increase substantially, the loss will be huge. In most of the cases, there will be a loss of profits for the studios, at least of big films like Tenet and Wonder Woman 1984. However, if films like Sooryavanshi and 83 were to be planned for release in Indian cinemas during this period when the audience is still fighting shy of returning to the cinemas for various reasons, the producers of the two films could end up making huge losses in films which appear to be potential blockbusters. And that may happen not because the films would turn out to be weak content-wise but because people just did not turn up at the cinemas. In other words, there’s a basic difference between Hollywood studios and Bollywood producers: the former can take a risk because the amount of loss or reduction in profit would be minuscule in the total scheme of things, but the latter can’t dream of taking a risk which could result in unimaginable losses to them.