It has been 8 months since I came to Dublin. Since then, I seem to have grown some 'extra' fondness towards Bollywood. Over my period from September 2016 until March 2017, I have watched a lot of Bollywood movies at the theatres. The first movie that I watched after coming to Dublin was Karan Johar's 'Ae Dil Hai Mushkil'. Initially, I went to buy the tickets from the box office believing that the seats I might have got could be flexible (as in to change it).
Upon entering the theatre, I was dumbstruck because the movie was housefull and I believed about KJo's ability and Aishwarya's star struck presence could bring audience to the theatres even abroad. The next movie that I watched was 'Dear Zindagi' which took surprisingly turned out to be housefull on a weekday. Here I believed it was SRK's star power that brought people into theatres.
But after few such viewings, I realized that there are not many factors that come into play for the audience abroad. There is no doubt that the indian audiences abroad are driven to theatres on the basis of Star Power, to an extent the director and music. 'Dangal', 'Dhoom 3', 'Happy New Year', 'PK' etc are a symbol of Star Power majorly influencing box office overseas. Though this trend of star power being replaced by content has seen visible and effective changes in India but no such traces are seen abroad.
What has been more upsetting is that the movies that receive international recognition like 'Masaan', 'Anarkali of Aarah', "Raman Raghav 2.0', sadly do not release for the audience overseas because of the tight budget and no international distributors, so even if an audience is eager for any such movie, they have settle for online watch. And it is this restricted distribution that also promotes piracy because if a person has to, they will somehow watch it.
The youth overseas today is not interested in watching indian movies overseas because they may believe "Itni mehnat se bahar aayein hain, waapas Hindustani movie nahi dekhni......Homesickness hoti hai" and because over 7 months of staying overseas I haven't seen more that 40% of a bollywood movie theatre occupied by youth. So instead, they watch Hollywood and stay content but deep down, they do watch hindi movies online though. Maybe the weak Indian currency comes into play for this one and maybe the reason that not a lot of the youth watch Bollywood cinema overseas.
Surprisingly, there is a lot of local crowd that I have observed, who come to see Bollywood drama. Though, Bollywood has a long way to go, a two hour long drama spiced up with action and emotions give a perfect blend to the international audience who according to me, refrain from expressing emotions. It seems to appear to me that they seem to be very happy when a character from the movies emote it. At this one might question "Why only Bollywood? Hollywood does it too." For this question, I just have 1 answer, "No one does it better than Indians." And since the indian audience has been a part of this expression, they feel that maybe they can avoid such movies at theatres which can be another reason for not watching a lot of Bollywood cinema outside.
With all said, I hope that Bollywood continues to find audience overseas even if they go a little overboard with their acting, music or content. The surprise super-success of 'Dum Laga Ke Haisha' which earned 300 million(30 crores) and 150 million(15 crores) overseas and 'Ranjhanaa' which earned 650 million(65 crore) domestically and 350 million(35 crore) internationally even gave confidence to the producers of Ranjhanaa, "Eros International" that indian audience overseas are beginning to appreciate content and not star power. Their "risk" had actually "payed off" well for them and we have seen a good risen trend of international releases from this particular production house. Such "risks" shoud also be taken by other production houses, they may not know the outcome of releasing their movies abroad.
Maybe, the indian audience starts to visit cinemas overseas which might give a ray of hope to the producers that "times are changing" for good.
This article will never be old enough. One cam read it again and again still feeling the same dedication they had towards article while reading it first ! Keep up the good work .
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