Slumdog opens global market for Bollywood
By siliconindia   |   Tuesday, 24 February 2009, 22:09 IST   |    1 Comments
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Mumbai: Slumdog Millionaire's Oscar win has opened a global market for Rs 11,000 Bollywood industry, by inspiring big production houses to carve a niche market for films with Indian actors, stories, music and style that appeal to a larger audience in the U.S., instead of just the Indian diaspora. Many producers said that the success of the movie will not change Bollywood. But it will make producers in Hollywood realize that a new opportunity has emerged. "Bollywood movies are meant for Indian audiences. Slumdog was made for western audiences. But its success shows that there is an opportunity for Hollywood to take up Indian themes, cast and technicians and make a movie that is of world standard and which works," said film producer Bobby Bedi. Rajesh Sawhney, President of Reliance Entertainment, said, "Slumdog is a Bollywood movie told in typical Bollywood style, with Indian actors and shot in India, which has appealed to an audience that goes beyond the Indian diaspora." Reliance Entertainment recently announced a multi-million dollar collaboration deal with maverick director Steven Spielberg. "Until now, Bollywood movies only addressed Indians in the U.S. We hope this is not a one-off and there are more films that follow this experimentation," Sawhney added. Sawhney's company, for instance, is producing Kites, which has a Mexican heroine, Barbara Mori, and Indian star Hrithik Roshan and is shot in Los Angeles with an international audience in mind. Sawhney said the Chinese have already made a dent in the U.S. mass market with films like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, which won an Oscar for the Best Foreign Language Film in 2000 and also became a box office success in the U.S. in its own right. Big movie studios like Sony (which made Saawariya), Fox Entertainment and Warner Brothers (which made Chandni Chowk to China) that have been cautious in investing in Bollywood films are expected to change their mind after Slumdog. "India and China are the two emerging markets with a large audience base and their markets are stagnating. China has rules that don't allow Hollywood studios easy entry. So this might be an opportunity for the studios to put in more money in India," said Sawhney. Source: Business Standard

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