The two biggest movie industries in the world are the American film production called “Hollywood” and the Indian film production called “Bollywood”. Those names are not similar on purpose but “the word Bollywood is (obviously) a play on Hollywood, with the B coming from Bombay (now known as Mumbai), the center of the film world”, explains Andrew Grant, writer for “Worldfilm” (2009). These two industries are competitors on an international basis, fighting for revenues, audience and recognition. While Hollywood is really famous in the Western hemisphere, Bollywood is the number one in the Asian world, but it is already spreading to other markets and countries worldwide.
However, a lot is commonly known about Hollywood’s history. Therefore, a short summary of Bollywood’s history shall follow: the industry started in already 1913 but did not develop as quickly as the American competitor (Grant, 2009). After the first movie with sound was released in 1931, “the number of productions companies began to skyrocket, as did the number of films being produced each year” (Grant, 2009). When the “New Wave” began in the 1940s, the plot of movies changed from pure entertainment, “and mythological stories of the past” to more problematic issues such as the “dowry system, polygamy and prostitution” (Grant, 2009).
The Bollywood movie as we can see it today is called “Masala film” which developed after the New Wave, back to “a mash of genres including action, comedy, and melodrama punctuated by approximately six song and dance numbers” (Grant, 2009). However, a new style of Bollywood movies arises. The movie “Slumdog Millionaire” was immensely successful, although it was completely different from the Masala film, which is loved so much in India (Grant, 2009). The new movies like “Slumdog Millionaire” deal with rather realistic and problematic topics. They even show “ugly” pictures and cruel honesty, but still a lot of revealing emotions, focusing on interpersonal relationships and the Indian culture is involved.
Because Bollywood is still not as famous as Hollywood it might be difficult to get a picture of what “Bollywood” means in terms of style and plot. Richard Byrne, music critic for “The Globalist”, described Bollywood as “fanciful romantic musicals made in India […] typically feature[ing] large casts singing and dancing in carefully choreographed pageants of love” (Byrne, 2002). Moreover, Andrew Grant stated that “the word Bollywood immediately conjures up images of sumptuous, brightly colored productions shot in exotic locales featuring beautiful stars partaking in impressively choreographed song and dance numbers” (Grant, 2009). And when it comes to questions about the plot, Jason Overdorf, writer for “Newsweek”, can help out: Bollywood is “following stock formulas: brothers separated at birth, village rebel vs. rapacious landlord or cops vs. robbers. It was considered the height of innovation simply to meld these elements, creating, say, a story about brothers separated at birth who grow up on opposite sides of the law but then ultimately join forces against an evil landlord after much singing, dancing and weeping” (Overdorf, 2007). And of course one has to add that love and romance is also among the most common and favorite themes. Moreover, one has to say that the most important ingredient for a successful Bollywood movie is a star (Grant, 2009). Actors and actresses are somehow “considered royalty” (Grant, 2009) so that the Indian audience has a strong feeling of loyalty (Grant, 2009) and mainly sees the movies with those stars.
The movies produced in India are therefore obviously very different from Hollywood where singing, dancing and showing strong emotions (e.g men crying without shame in Bollywood movies) is rather unusual. These stylistic devices seem to be strange for the Western culture but they are used for a reason. Not only tradition, culture and old story telling is involved but “Manmohan Desai, one of the more successful Bollywood directors [once said]: “I want people to forget their misery. I want to take them into a dream world where there is no poverty, where there are no beggars, where fate is kind and god is busy looking after his flock” (Grant, 2009).
To recapitulate what Bollywood stands for, how it developed, what its stylistic devices are and how it might evolve in the future, Andrew Grant’s summary on Bollywood is merely perfect: “The hodgepodge of action, romance, comedy and of course musical numbers is a model that still dominates the Bollywood industry, and though greater attention is now paid to plot, character development, and dramatic tension, it is, in most cases, sheer star power that accounts for a film’s success.” (Grant, 2009)
While Hollywood is massively successful across the world, Bollywood is step by step working on an international career. One option for this plan might be to seek strong partners or even buy a Hollywood movie company. The advantages of this purchase are varying from suddenly having access to great contacts, technology, business strategies, to owning a new department of one’s own business right in the centre of the competing industry’s heart and being able to slowly integrate own visions, projects, people such as directors, stars or business people. This option was within reach for a Bollywood company. On the 19th of September 2010 one could read in the Wall Street Journal that the “Indian conglomerate Sahara India Pariwar is in exploratory talks on acquiring beleaguered movie studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. for more than $2 billion” (Spector, 2010). MGM was and still is facing financial problems of $4 billion US dollars, and was looking for a partner that could help out (Spector). Of course the studios would still remain a lot of power but the new partner company would also have some power and access to the company’s facilities.
The fact alone that a Bollywood company is financially able, willing, and businesslike ready for such a step shows a great development of the Indian movie industry and their acquired resources. The sum offered was more than other companies such as Time Warner would have given (Spector, 2010). However, on the 8th of February 2011 the LA Times reported that “MGM has talked to several other studios, including Paramount Pictures, 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros., but Sony has been more aggressive in negotiations” (Fritz, 2011), and eventually won the race, leaving Sahara India Pariwar behind. Nevertheless, one should keep in mind that it was an option that an Indian company could have gotten the deal and would have been able to finance it. Furthermore, although Sony got the deal this does not mean that Bollywood is out of the game: one of Bollywood’s most potential businessmen Ronnie Screwvala is cooperating with Sony Pictures among others, which will be discussed later. So the one way or the other, Bollywood makes the big deals and becomes more and more internationally successful and important.
Several business people are shaping the Indian movie industry and acquire important contacts to the mega industry Hollywood. Two of them will be observed closer here: Anil Ambani and Ronnie Screwvala. Anil Ambani is an “industrialist [head of the Reliance Anil Ambani Group, who] has joined hands with Hollywood directors Steven Spielberg and Stacey Snider for a few joint ventures” (Mathur, 2009). According to Shana Ting Lipton, Spielberg “dumped Paramount for Reliance Anil Ambani Group” (2009). Looking at these actions and deals it is obvious that Bollywood’s power is constantly increasing. The partners apparently have great plans for corporate projects. Spielberg commented that he was “very excited that we’re in business again, independent of motion picture studios [.] This is a way we can have control over our products as well as co-ownership” (Mathur, 2009) which most likely is quite an attractive deal for directors and business people, especially for Hollywood. Therefore it could well be possible for Bollywood to take over Hollywood by e.g. attracting key business figures, actors, directors, even entire companies, and eventually having access to all needed resources to gain control and the major amount of shares. Bollywood just needs smart and success driven businessmen like Ambani.
The second businessman to be discussed here is Ronnie Screwvala who is among the first 25 people of CNN’s “Asia’s most important business people” (CNN, 2011), being described as “the man who modernized his country's beloved film industry, a.k.a. Bollywood. He's become a go-to guy for American media companies seeking a foothold in India” (CNN, 2011). Screwvala is the founder of the company UTV Software Communications which is a “multimedia conglomerate [,] listed on the Bombay market exchange with a market capitalization of $435 million, has interests in film, TV, animation and videogame production and distribution” (Overdorf, 2007). Not only is this a company with a great variety of interest, projects and future plans but also with leading business partners from Hollywood such as Sony Pictures, Fox Searchlight, Will Smith's Overbrook Entertainment, and Walt Disney (Overdorf, 2007). Obviously, Screwvala has a powerful basis with his enterprise, great partners, and both great potential in Bollywood and Hollywood.
In India, he has changed the way of movie-making, deal-making and business concepts. The movies were produced rather chaotic as Overdorf describes that the producers “never worked out a budget in advance […]. Preproduction was a 20-minute meeting. Writers made up the dialogue as they went along. There were no production schedules or contracts” (Overdorf, 2007). By structuring and organizing this entire process, he is the one who actually prepared Bollywood to be a competitive, internationally successful industry. Furthermore, to take the external steps to reach for markets outside of India he opened UTV offices in the US, Great Britain, Canada, and the United Arab Emirates in order to act immediately to other markets instead of having it done by other companies (Overdorf, 2007). Moreover, UTV works on opening more markets which are “countries where Bollywood films have established a niche market” (Overdorf, 2007). Whether the setup of new markets has worked out or will work out in the future will be discussed at a later point, concerning the internal and external market for Bollywood. Jason Overdorf perfectly states that “the next challenge for Bollywood is to branch out to the broader media and entertainment business, which is expected to grow in India from about $11 billion to $25 billion by 2011” (Overdorf, 2007). This is impressive especially when considering that Bollywood has not yet arrived in all parts of the world. The possible increase when assuming it will spread over the planet is unbelievable.
Because Bollywood is increasing its revenues and viewership almost exponentially (Businessweek, 2002) and maybe even becoming a threat to Hollywood there are several options to handle the situation. Shana Ting Liptop wrote in her article “The industry battle is on” that “one of the solutions seems to be more collaboration between the two filmmaking industry giants” (Lipton, 2009) in order for Hollywood to adapt to the new situation. Of course the American movie industry is enormously powerful and has seemingly infinitive resources but India has the mass of people. Furthermore, the financial situation in India improves and more and more money is “spent on entertainment” (Overdorf, 2007).
Therefore, India has both a great domestic market and also great prospects for external markets. At first the domestic market shall be observed. “India’s 500 million population under the age of 20 will ensure that the market inside India will grow exponentially in the coming years” (Woke, 2007). Entertainment and especially the Masala movies mentioned before are enormously popular in India. And in contrast to Hollywood the stars in Bollywood movies are “considered royalty” (Grant, 2009) and in the majority of cases the reason why the Indian audience watches a movie in the cinema (Grant, 2009). The most famous of all stars is Shah Rukh Khan. “Every film he graces—no matter how bad—is a surefire smash, every product he endorses is a best seller, and there are so many shrines to him across India that he could launch a new religion. A run of hits since 1995 has raked in about a quarter of a billion dollars, mostly from 20¢ tickets“ (Perry, 2004). The great advantage of this form of admiration is that Bollywood has almost a security that the audience will definitely go to the cinema only because of a certain star (Shah Rukh Khan definitely being the most popular star by far). Although fan-ship is also a great issue for Hollywood there is no commitment to one star like Khan in India. Furthermore, a popular figure like him is also a great opportunity for promotion, marketing, advertising, charity events and more in order to introduce new markets to Bollywood.
In terms of money and revenues, Bollywood’s domestic market has the disadvantage that the people are still rather poor and therefore the cinema tickets have to be cheap. Timmy Kandhari, “head of [Pricewaterhouse Cooper's] media and entertainment practice” states that "our growth rates are much higher than Hollywood's, but in value terms we are way below. But that will change as ticket prices—which now average less than $1 in India—catch up with the racing Indian economy” (Overdorf, 2007). And most likely, the prices will obtain Hollywood prices at some point due to Bollywood’s glorious future outlook, in terms of capable businessmen, a growing viewership, expanding markets and Bollywood becoming more famous. “India’s national cinema is booming, with each year seeing double-digit percentage growth in ticket sales” (Grant, 2009). And talking about actual sums one can see that in the table of “Businessweek” the worldwide revenues of Bollywood are “only” US $1.3 billion while Hollywood’s revenues are about US $51 billion (2002). However, according to Overdorf “Indian movies are also enjoying an impressive domestic boom. In 2006, India's film business grossed about $2 billion, up from $1.5 billion in 2004, and PricewaterhouseCoopers forecasts revenue will leap to more than $4 billion over the next five years“. This increase is impressive especially because it only took place in the past nine years. Clearly, Bollywood is entering the big competition with “double-digit percentage growth in ticket sales” each year (Grant, 2009). As already mentioned, a cinema ticket might cost about 20cents (Perry, 2004) to $1 US dollar (Overdorf, 2007). First of all, it is very impressive that the revenues are still so high although the tickets are so cheap. Secondly, with a more and more booming market and growing economy, the ticket prices will eventually “catch up” (Overdorf, 2007), and thirdly, “the Indians are getting wealthier” spending more of their money of movies and entertainment (Overdorf, 2007). Therefore, Bollywood has fantastic future prospects with great partners, improving quality of movies, technology and an uprising economy.
And not only the internal market is more than promising but even more interesting is the diverse external market. To begin with the Asian continent, the first country would be Pakistan which culturally is quite similar to India due to their past history. Pakistan has a population of 180 Million people (Population Council, 2011) and has a great demand for the Indian Masala movies because of the cultural similarities and same wishes for dancing and singing parts in movies (Grant, 2009). Moreover, in some movies the problem of Pakistan and India is sometimes a side-topic next to the main story line, such as in the epic love story of “Veer and Zaara”, staring Shah Rukh Khan and Preity Zinta. Because the leading female part is Pakistani and the leading male part Indian, their love is struggling because of societal conventions, family problems and the distance. Especially because the story is set up as a relationship between an Indian and a Pakistani both countries were represented which most likely widened the target audience from only India to India and Pakistan (and of course other Bollywood markets).
The next country that is a great market for the Indian movie industry is Russia and the former Soviet countries close to Russia. Not only the geographical closeness but also politically Bollywood was attractive there during the Cold War time (Wordpress, 2007). The country did not provide any access to Hollywood movies because that was the enemy’s cultural good. Therefore, Russia produced their own movies and showed foreign movies from India (Wordpress, 2007). Although the political situation and the access to international movies has changed, Russia and the former Soviet states are still a great market for Bollywood due to their geographical closeness and some cultural similarities. Moreover, Bollywood is slowly spreading more to Eastern Europe, has reached Germany where regularly Bollywood movies are shown on the channel RTL2 which has bought the rights for showing Bollywood movies and has great ratings and therefore continues distributing it.
From Pakistan and East Europe, the market slowly spreads and grows in the Middle East where the culture is more different but still somehow connected in terms of religion, glittering clothes, furniture, decorations, and the tradition of music and dance. Especially the religious aspect is of great value here. Furthermore, “India is also the only Non-Muslim country in the world, which has the most Muslims, almost 200 million. The frequent use of Urdu words in movies, give many Muslims, especially Arabs, a chance to identify the Muslim culture/certain words/language” (Wordpress, 2007). From there it spreads to the next continent Africa, which is a great new potential market. The first countries to be Bollywood’s target were South Africa, Egypt and Kenya (Wordpress, 2007).
Considering all these diverse countries and continents it is no more surprising why Bollywood has a viewership of 3.6 billion people (Businessweek, 2002). And because not all of these markets are either completely opened up or just starting to become Bollywood targets, there is an enormous future potential, not to mention what will happen when the domino effect continues from country to country. Hollywood, already known throughout the world, might be envious about these promising opportunities of new markets. However, not only Asia, Africa and Europe are potential markets but also South America and Australia. In South America the reason for the Bollywood demand can be explained by the many NRIs – the Non Resident Indians (Wordpress, 2007). The Bollywood hype in Australia was probably caused also because of the geographical closeness and especially because of the movie Moulin Rouge, produced “by Australian director Baz Luhrman” (Byrne, 2002). The movie had many stylistic devices of Indian movies in it such as dancing and singing scenes, great choreographies, and a compelling love story (Byrne, 2002). Byrne even suggests that Bollywood will go from “India to the U.S. via Australia”.
Finally, target Europe. Not only do Indian movies spread over from Eastern Europe but from a different direction: Great Britain. In Europe, Great Britain has probably the highest demand for Bollywood, showing the movies regularly in the cinemas and making great revenues from it (BBC, 2006). For example, the movie “Don”, again staring Shah Rukh Khan, made 1.4 million pounds alone in Great Britain!” (BBC, 2006). The reason for this is the number of Non Resident Indians living in Great Britain for generations due to the past history of India and Great Britain (Byrne, 2002). Furthermore, Bollywood movies are even made in Europe such as “Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge” which means “The Big Hearted Will Take the Bride” (Inamdar, 2010), again: staring Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol, one of the most famous actresses in India. The story takes place all over Europe because a couple of Indian friends living in London want to travel across Europe before getting married and going back to India. Boy and girl do not know each other yet but are coincidentally on the same trip. They travel from London to France, to Switzerland and Germany, sometimes tenderly mocking the European culture and then dancing and singing in the Alps and famous places like under the Eiffeltower. Not only is it amusing to watch how India perceives the European culture and stereotypes it, but also is it an interesting feeling of seeing the Indian movie stars in leather pants and traditional European costumes. However, producing the movies in Europe also brings profit to the European countries, which is another reason for distributing them even more and supporting the business (Wordpress, 2007). Moreover, as the movies then are shown in India and promoting Europe and how much fun the characters have there, it becomes an interesting travel destination. As already said “Indians are getting wealthier” (Overdorf, 2007), and also want to travel the world, possibly even just for the reason to visit the space where a movie was made.
To sum up, Bollywood conquers the world. A great help for this is the demand for those movies especially by the Non Resident Indians who are living all across the world. “Around 15 million Indian expatriates living in different parts of the world account for over 65% of Bollywood’s earnings. An estimated $800 is spent by NRI’s in Indian movies and music. US (2 million Indian expats), UK (1.5 million), South Africa (1 million of Africa’s 2 million Indian population) are major markets for Bollywood” (Woke, 2007). Therefore, the options for expanding and winning new markets are brilliant. And even though the style of the Masala movies is probably not everybody’s taste Bollywood wins new targets with new styles of movies such as the extremely successful “Slumdog Millionaire” (Grant, 2009).
In conclusion, Bollywood has and will have a growing impact on the Western society. As business men like Ambani and Screwvala improve the Indian movie industry and make it competitive worldwide, the industry Hollywood changes as well. More and more studios and production companies enter partnerships with Indian companies in order to secure both some profits coming from the new markets, growing viewership plus huge business potential of Bollywood. This will definitely change the Western movie business because at some point it might become necessary to join these partnerships and cooperation in order to survive in the international battle of movie-making.
Bollywood has great financial future outlooks despite the worldwide financial crisis: “Unlike many countries in these lean economic times, India’s national cinema is booming, with each year seeing double-digit percentage growth in ticket sales” (Grant, 2009). And as already mentioned, the ticket prices for cinema visits will at some point “catch up” with the Western prices (Overdorf, 2007), increasing the revenues of Bollywood even more, supporting in return the economy and improve the country’s overall situation.
Further impacts on the Western society might be a change of movie styles. Both industries have very different stylistic devices, with Bollywood being “fanciful romantic musicals […] typically feature[ing] large casts singing and dancing in carefully choreographed pageants of love” (Byrne, 2002) and Hollywood usually not including dancing and singing as entire scenes in their movies except for Walt Disney movies and explicit musicals. Actors, directors, producers and technicians will have the chance to switch from their home movie industry to the other one, which again will have impacts on the movies themselves. A first impression of how this clash of Western and Eastern style might look like was the movie “Moulin Rouge” (Byrne, 2002). Naturally this process will take some time but eventually it is very likely that more movies will be produced and distributed, combining the different elements and styles, in all parts of the world.
Another question is what is going to happen when this transition period is over and one of the industries will have a bigger influence, more shares, more power and a bigger audience, and revenues. After researching all these facts, comparing, predicting and evaluating, it seems more likely that Bollywood eventually will win the race. Taking a look at the market situation it is fairly obvious that Bollywood has the greater potential because first of all Hollywood’s markets are almost saturated (Woke, 2007). Spreading from India to Russia, Pakistan and Australia, further to Eastern Europe, East Asia and Africa, and also spreading from Great Britain to Central Europe, or from South America up north to the United States – Bollywood is very close to an international break-through!
The industry is ready for the big battle for rank number one movie production industry – in terms of capital, international (increasing) recognition, and attractiveness for business people due to the new arising situation in Asia. Not only the economical rising of China brings more money to Asia but India is rising in a sector with great potential: entertainment. Even Hollywood is willing to enter partnerships to not lose power or great business opportunities. And when considering Bollywood’s revenues, viewership, annually produced movies (Businessweek, 2002) and the developing market situation it is just a question of time that Bollywood will have a strong basis across the world, finding more and more markets - just like Hollywood did in the 20th century - and expanding as much as they can. So eventually, by acquiring more power, influence, property, partners, contacts, technical advances etc. Bollywood will in the long run be superior to Hollywood, which consequently will change the Western cinema and its society entirely.
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