Only one country’s film industry can potentially challenge Hollywood’s global dominance and give it a run for its money. Neither China nor Europe is up to this task (although it could be argued that China is doing so indirectly by taking over ownership of many Hollywood production companies).
It can only be India which produces the largest number of films in the world every year even if it trails far behind both in terms of film budgets and profits. The Oscar to RRR in 2023 was partly a belated recognition of India’s nascent prowess.
It is true that Indian cinema has a long way to go. The immensity of the task ahead is apparent when we consider that Barbie, nominated for several Oscars, one of the biggest hits of the year, made in excess of a billion dollars. Meanwhile, in India, in 2023, four movies that made in excess of five hundred crores. These were Pathan, Jawan, Gaddar 2 and most recently. Animal. Animal shows a worldwide collection of 110 million dollars, no mean feat but let us remind ourselves that it is still less than the budget for Barbie and in box office terms it is a tenth of what the Oscar frontrunner made.
A billion dollars may seem like an impossibly high target for an Indian film, but we should bear in mind that over the past years box office figures have risen faster in India than they have for Hollywood. Just a few years ago, even entering the hundred crore club was considered a singular achievement for a film. That figure has been raised to five hundred crores now and will soon be one thousand crores.
It is true that Hollywood has its share of formulaic, mediocre and bad films, but it is undoubtedly ahead of India in terms of overall quality. This can, however change, with hard work and determination. There are many things that Indian film industry needs to do in order to improve the quality of its films and thereby draw in bigger global audiences.
For one thing it needs to discourage nepotism in the film industry and encourage talent instead. Then, it needs to stop copying Hollywood and making clones. Instead of films such as Aamir Khan’s Laal Singh Chaddha based on Forrest Gump or more recently the Zoya Akhtar directed Archies it would be far wiser to focus on original and indigenous content.
One of the advantages that Hollywood has over Bollywood is the frequent collaboration it has with film makers from other English-speaking countries such as the Canadians, the Australians and most notably the United Kingdom. The success of Gandhi, Slumdog Millionaire and Dunkirk are instances of cinema with strong British participation. In this regard, there is something that India and Japan share in common, which is Asian culture, and cooperation in film making could be to their mutual benefit.
Is there any evidence for such a shared culture? The success of superstar Rajnikanth’s films in Japan where he is loved by many is one such illustration. The superstar first rose to success in Japan with his film Muthu. The film ran for 23 weeks and collected 1.6 million, which made it the highest grossing film in Japan. On a visit to Tokyo in 2006, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh spoke of this film while addressing the Japanese Parliament, to resounding applause.
Of late Japanese cinema is also finding an audience in India. Increasingly, Indian audiences are being drawn to Japanese anime being screened at multiplexes. Sensing the potential, renowned Japanese film maker Makato Shinkai visited India earlier this year in April to promote the already successful Suzume. Suzume, which is about the adventures of a high school girl, broke records in global markets including at the Chinese box office where it earned roughly 53 million US dollars. The global dominance of Hollywood as far as animation films are concerned can emerge only from Japan.
Both Japan and India have their individual strengths when it comes to filmmaking. If Japan and India were to intelligently collaborate in making animation films, each playing to its individual strengths, the results may alarm Hollywood but enthrall cinema watching audiences worldwide.
Superstar Amitabh Bachchan is said to have remarked a while ago that if Indian films had a Hollywood budget, we could show the world what we are capable of. While there is a degree of truth in that observation, big budgets don’t always matter. After all, Chandrayaan made a moon landing by spending less than the budget for a Hollywood film.
India astounded the world and the leadership at NASA by accomplishing so much with such little investment. On another note, American audiences were amazed by the VFX and other visual effects in some scenes in RRR that were made on a vastly smaller budget compared to Hollywood biggies.
Let us set our targets high. RRR opened doors, but we shouldn’t only think of winning more Oscars but also think of ways and means to make more money at the international box office. It is one thing for a film to make a billion dollars after investing one hundred and forty-five million dollars as was the case with Barbie. It will be a far more significant achievement for an Indian film to make a billion dollars at the global box office – not with a Hollywood film like budget – but to do so on a shoe string budget, in the same way that ISRO accomplished the moon landing. The success of RRR should be considered to be only a trailer of bigger things to come. A Bollywood David can indeed take on the Hollywood Goliath – if Indian filmmakers take a leaf out of the ISRO playbook and get their act together.
Rajesh Talwar is the prolific author of thirty-nine books across multiple genres and has worked for the United Nations for more than two decades in numerous countries across three continents. His forthcoming book is ‘The Boy Who Fought an Empire.’