By Surendra Bhatia
When the cat is away, mice are at play. But what if the cat starts taking shorter holidays and is hardly ever away? For sure, mice will not get much time to play… they will spend most of their time cowering in their holes, deterred from venturing out, and praying to their Almighty to take the cat away. Which, as we all know, is not going to happen: the Almighty gives not a damn for the weak…
Bollywood would understand exactly what the mice are going through. Hollywood was like the cat that stayed away most of the time, making brief forays into India, allowing Bollywood to go its merry way. In a way, Hollywood had conceded the Indian domestic market to the local industries, a generosity it had not extended to the native film industries of many other countries. It was thought, India was special, with its own highly-developed, self-created idiom that foreign cinema could not breach. For the longest time, Hollywood in the Indian market was a guest from the outside, patronised occasionally but not invited to stay on and join the family.
Times have changed. Just recently, Arjun Patiala scurried around like a frightened rat, from one hole of a release date to another, to avoid a direct clash with The Lion King, and then Jabariya Jodi went through the same petrified motions because it had the misfortune to have zeroed in on a release date that would set it up against Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw. Since the last few years, the release calendar of Bollywood films is being determined as much by the local opposition as by Hollywood films. Quite simply: the number of Bollywood films that need to be given way to at release time are less than ten a year, all told; but Hollywood films that would brook no opposition from Bollywood films today add up to over 20 a year! This means that almost every other week, a potential Hollywood blockbuster is releasing in India. Where does it leave the local industry? Obviously, in a deep hole that is getting deeper every week.
Everyone in Bollywood saw it coming but nobody did anything about it. The problem is, what to do about it, anyway? India, unlike China, can’t restrict releases of Hollywood films to a certain number annually because it boasts of democracy, and limiting Hollywood films would have WTO repercussions on other trade products. PM Narendra Modi can’t do a Mann Ki Baat show on Make-in-India plea, asking the people to patronise Indian films first and not Hollywood films, because when have governments ever cared about India’s film industries? So, Bollywood and other Indian regional film industries are literally on their own, peddling upstream with half an oar.
One part of the problem stems from reluctance of Indian film industries to grow within the country, and the other, most importantly, is the ability of Hollywood films to reach out to all segments of the diverse country that is India.
Since decades, possibly from the time talkies took off, the Indian market has been strictly divided along regional lines or in terms of language. A Bengali film is a Bengali film, seen in West Bengal and maybe a few surrounding states which boast of Bengali-speaking pockets, but hardly ever watched by others beyond that limited region. Even Bengali classics of Satyajit Ray and Mrinal Sen, acclaimed all over the world, failed to find any audience beyond the regional boundaries of Bengali language. The French may consider Ray and Sen films among the best in world cinema but they never got seen in Bandra or Borivli in Bombay. The same applies to all Indian films. Raj Kapoor’s Awara and Shree 420, Mehboob Khan’s Mother India, Bimal Roy’s Do Bigha Zameen are some of the greatest Indian films ever made but a poll would be hard-pressed to find people in Tamil Nadu or Kerala who would have seen them or heard of them. And this is not about just the old films. Even recent releases face the same situation. Filmmakers in Tamil Nadu happily remake Hindi films for their Tamil audiences, confident that the Hindi version has not been seen in their region, in just the same way that Hindi filmmakers remake South films, assured that the novelty of the film hasn’t touched Hindi shores.
This segmentation, or, actually, fragmentation of the Indian market into isolated regions has stunted the growth of Indian film industries. This became starkly evident when Bahubali 2: The Conclusion and its many dubbed versions were released simultaneously pan-India, promoted in each region as a new film. It became the first Indian film to get to revenues of Rs. 1,000-crore-plus without breaking a sweat. This, at a time when the best of Bollywood films found it near impossible to breach even the Rs. 400-crore barrier. Surprisingly, except for Rajinikanth films, no one has ever tried the same release formula in India. It ought not to have been difficult to give Dangal, for instance, the same release treatment but most filmmakers in India still think in terms of regions and not pan-India.
Bahubali: The Conclusion proved, as Hollywood’s Fast & Furious and Avengers: Endgame have shown, that the Indian market for cinema is huge, provided filmmakers have a pan-India outlook. Bollywood has always been plagued by the frog-in-the-well syndrome. Assamese filmmaker Jahnu Barua has won over 12 National Awards for his films and has been bestowed the Padma Shri and the Padma Bhushan, and yet his films are entirely unknown beyond the narrow North-East of India. Why weren’t his films, worthy of National Awards, dubbed and released all over the country like Bahubali or The Lion King? Sure, a wide release doesn’t always mean, the takings would be huge but out of ten of his films, at least three may have paid off handsomely.
While the release strategies of Bahubali and Rajinikanth films are the exception in the Indian market, these are the norm for Hollywood films in India. Even today, the penetration of English language is limited to urban centres, and this had always impaired the growth of Hollywood films. But now that Hollywood films, at least the big ones, are being dubbed and released in two or three regional languages plus Hindi, the pot of gold has started overflowing. Bahubali raked in over Rs. 1,000 crore; Fast & Furious takes in over Rs. 100 crore easily… how soon will it be that a Hollywood blockbuster does a Bahubali, while Bollywood looks on helplessly?
It is one thing that Bollywood would struggle for bigger markets abroad but why should the premiere film industry not at least exploit what is its home market? And please don’t categorise Tamil Nadu as not the home market for Bollywood. It is very much so. In fact, it has become the home market for The Lion King, dubbed in Tamil, so why not for dubbed Bollywood films?
Indian philosophies are all about going inwards, and that’s what Bollywood needs to do. Apart from bringing to fore the culture-based stories, which hold great relevance for the world, Indian filmmakers need to see pan-India as their own market, leaving not a single region out of their business plans. Overseas markets will develop as years go by, but the internal domestic market needs to be exploited more ruthlessly, and meticulously. It can easily throw up pots of gold, as Bahubali has proven. Instead of chasing mirages at Cannes, it would be far better to reach out to all corners of the country and maximise returns.
Yes, Hollywood has many tried-and-tested franchises and is in a position to launch massive promotional campaigns to lure Indian audiences. But, it should not be forgotten that the Indian market would still prefer to watch Dangal over Avengers, provided it came to them in their own language. Also, not to be forgotten is the fact that dubbed Dangal scored big in the Chinese market, competing with the best in the world, so there’s no reason why it should do otherwise within India.
If only Bollywood, as also other film industries, started releasing their films and the dubbed versions across the country, the mice would not become cats but they would at least have a whole lot of more holes to go to, and then at a certain time, when mice are enough in numbers, even cats begin to get wary of them. It’s not a tough game to play; dubbing is not expensive though promotional and release costs could be substantial but the takings, if they come, would be huge. Besides, if Indian films don’t step out to fight to protect their own markets, they will be left to their holes, with half-a-dozen cats outside, ready to swallow them up. Survival is a great motivation to roll up sleeves and fight, no?
