Bollywood rakes in foreign
funds By Siddharth Srivastava
NEW DELHI - The Indian film industry is on
a roll, flush with money from a strong economy and
strengthened by partnerships with foreign players
and funds from overseas listings.
Young
people with cash to spend are filling new cinema
complexes and their numbers are attracting the
attention of the world's biggest production
houses, led by Sony Pictures. Sony's recently
released Saawariya is the first big-budget
Hindi movie fully financed by a top Hollywood
studio. The romantic musical is directed by top
Indian director Sanjay Leela Bhansali, whose
earlier productions include
the blockbuster Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam and
the critically acclaimed Black.
The
initial reviews and response to Saawariya,
which has also been released in the US, have been
lukewarm, with the movie overshadowed by another
big release, Om Shanti Om, starring
superstar Shahrukh Khan. There are indications,
though, that Saawariya, with its slow-paced
and aesthetic appeal, is picking up viewers in
Britain and the US.
Its release has
undoubtedly signalled that Hollywood's biggest
studios, which have been active in the past few
years as distributors of Hindi movies abroad and
English productions within India, are willing to
increase their bets in the country, even if the
investments are still a fraction of the amounts
poured into a typical American movie.
Other recent Hollywood agreements for
future Indian productions include Warner Bros with
veteran producer Ramesh Sippy, the maker of the
classic Sholay; and Walt Disney will make
animated movies with Yash Raj Films, featuring a
mix of picturesque song and dance sequences,
action, melodrama and comedy.
Indian
production house UTV, through tie-ups with Fox and
actor-producer Will Smith, has joint projects with
Hollywood studios valued at about US$40 million.
Paramount Pictures has floated Viacom-18, a joint
venture with Indian television news broadcaster
TV18. Sony has also signed a deal with Eros
International to produce as many as six films
budgeted in the US$5 million-US$10 million range.
In most cases the foreign finance is at
least 50% and in some the movies are fully funded.
''We would like to invest in others [apart from
Yash Raj] also on an ongoing basis," Mark Zoradi,
Disney's group president, has been quoted as
saying.
The estimated US$5 billion Indian
Hindi film industry, or Bollywood, churns out more
than 400 films a year with a wide range of themes.
Throw in the Tamil and Telugu films, with their
legion of diehard followers, and the total number
of movies being made annually in India tops 1,000.
The new money flowing into the business
may be marking a change of culture behind the
screen. Traditionally, individual Indian Hindi
movie producers have sought sponsors as colorful
as their productions, winning backing from dubious
underworld connections and the unaccounted black
money of rich businessmen, ranging from jewelers
to diamond merchants, and landlords to
stockbrokers.
Many in the industry have
therefore welcomed the arrival of organized money
and professional practices, which has been helped
by the federal government easing rules to allow
financial institutions to partially fund
productions. Indian business groups such as
Network 18, the Reliance-Anil Dhirubhai Ambani
Group (R-Adag), UTV, Percept Holdings, Carving
Dreams Entertainment, Eros and Saregama are
estimated to be backing up to 150 films with an
investment of more than US$1 billion. With the
influx of funds, top stars such as Hrithik Roshan
and Akshay Kumar have been snapped up for
multi-film deals for record-breaking amounts.
The general public can also join in the
investment scramble. Indian Film Co. and UTV have
tapped the London Stock Exchange's Alternative
Investment Market, while Prime Focus and K Sera
Sera have turned to the Indian stock markets for
cash.
Enthusiastic backing for the Indian
film industry goes hand-in-hand with the country's
booming economy, which is consistently clocking up
annual growth of more than 9%. New cinemas are an
increasingly common site in urban areas, with 325
multiplexes and 12,000 single screens in India in
2006, according to industry lobby Federation of
Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry. Within
the next four years, PVR, Inox Leisure, Shringar
Films and Adlabs alone are expected to add more
than 650 screens.
Filling the seats are
fans from a large and young multi-lingual
population happy to spend from good incomes earned
in retailing, software, finance and other sectors
at the center of India's economic growth. The
added investments may double the size of the
Indian movie business every three years over the
next decade or so, according to some investments.
Hollywood studios are already familiar
with the increasing enthusiasm of Indian
moviegoers, reared on Hindi productions, for
English-language films. Last year, 75 mostly
English-language movies earned more than US$50
million at the Indian box office, up from 55 films
and US$20 million in 2005. Sony Pictures has
already grossed US$25 million this year, according
to reports, crossing this mark for the third time
in a row, which the company has said is a record
for Hollywood studios in India.
Speaking
to reporters at the premiere of Saawariya,
Gareth Wigan, vice chairman of Sony's Columbia
TriStar division, said: "India has a huge
movie-going population. Even if you forget the
little pictures, it still supports 400 movies a
year."
It is not only Indians in India who
are fuelling their country's movie boom and
encouraging corporate investors to pour money into
the entertainment sector, especially Bollywood and
TV. The growing overseas population of Indians,
ranging from computer software specialists and
their families in California to construction
workers in Saudi Arabia, keep in touch with their
home culture through movies and soap operas. The
over 20-million strong diaspora is estimated to
have a combined wealth of more than US$350
billion. Foreign moviegoers are also
increasingly keen to look beyond the staple
Hollywood fare to movies with indigenous flavors.
Crossover movies, such as Bend It Like
Beckham, made in English, with a mix of Indian
and foreign actors that include Keira Knightley,
have a dedicated following and rake in profits
given the usually low budgets. Some of the biggest
earners in the recent past such as Main Hoo
Na, Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna, Kal Ho Na
Ho, Kriish, Salaam Namaste, have
had noted success abroad, while some have been
shot entirely on international location.
Siddharth Srivastava is a New
Delhi-based journalist.
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2007 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
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