Hollywood movie makers wants a share of the Indian film industry. Warner Bros appears to have gone all out in marketing their first Bollywood commercial film: Chandni Chowk to China or CC2C as the film is called in India. The film opens in the USA today and stars Akshay Kumar, Deepika Padukone, Roger Yuan and Gordon Liu and is directed by Nikhil Advani.
There are a lot of firsts in Chandni Chowk to China: first film backed and distributed by Warner Bros, first Bollywood film shot in China, first film starring well-known Chinese actors and first kung-fu inspired Bollywood film. I believe this is also the first time that a Bollywood film is releasing across 50 cities in the USA. Here is another first: the number of reviews in American media for a Bollywood film. I have never come across so many reviews for a Bollywood film like I did for Chandni Chowk to China. A by-product of all this coverage means that Akshay Kumar dubbed as India’s Jackie Chanhas got his fair bit of coverage including a profile in the venerable The New York Times. The paper describes Akshay as India’s superstar Everyman.
Reading through these film reviews can be a dizzying and interesting experience since you get a wide range of viewpoints. It follows then that the star ratings for Chandni Chowk to China range anywhere from one star to three stars. I wonder what we should make of this inconsistency in ratings? How do we use these movie reviews to figure out whether this movie is worth watching or just a mere “time-pass?” I have a suggestion and that is to remember that most Bollywood films tend to be escapist. The whole idea of watching a Bollywood film is to have fun and not ask too many questions. Once you get this basic rule of thumb right on how to watch a Bollywood film you will notice it is not such a bad experience after all.
The reason that Hollywood film companies are interested in getting a share of the Indian market is because of the money and reach of Indian films across the world. How much money do Indian dream merchants churn out from their films? How about $2 billion? Indian film makers generate $2 billion reports The Financial Times. I suspect the figure could be a lot higher and has the potential to go up if you market the films right.
In the USA alone Warner Bros is releasing Chandni Chowk to China with 138 prints in about 50 US cities, which is unprecedented.In contrast, compare how many prints of Slumdog Millionaire are being released in India? A little over 200 prints. Here is another number to think about. According to The New York Times last year’s hit movie Jodha Akbar brought in $16 million in the US on its opening weekend. Now, you get an inkling and a sense of how much Warner Bros wants to succeed in its foray into Indian cinema and tap the lucrative domestic and international market.
Warner Bros is not the first American film company to break into the lucrative Indian film industry. Warner Bros follows the footsteps of Sony Pictures, Viacom and Disney. Last year Sony Pictures India released its high profile Bollywood film Saawariyadirected by Sanjay Leela Bhansali starring two star kids: Sonam Kapoor and Ranbir Kapoor. Saawariya failed to impress the audience and was not a huge hit. To say it was a bit of a disappointment that the film did not do well at the box-office would be an understatement.
Warner Bros appears to be pursuing a different tack and working with both Bollywood and the Tamil film industry. In April 2008 Warner Bros announced that it has signed up with Soundarya Rajnikanth’s Ochre Films as a business partner. Under the terms of the business deal the costs of production and distribution of Live-Action South Indian language films will be covered and released by Warner Bros. Chennai-based Ochre Films is founded by Rajnikanth’s daughter and is focused on providing Visual Effects, Digital Film Lab, Non-Linear editing, CGI, and Pre-Production services.
I digressed. Back to Chandini Chowk to China. Will the film succeed in the USA? Will it appeal to the Americans? Well that depends on how you are segmenting the market. I suspect the film will be a big hit with the desi (South Asians), Afghanis, Iranians, Fijians, and folks from various parts of Africa, the traditional fan base for Indian movies in the US. Will the movie appeal to mainstream America? I will defer to Michael Hardy of The Boston Globe, who writes that this will only happen: “only if American audiences can accept an action hero who talks to potatoes.”
We will have our answer in a few days time when the box office collection figures start to roll in. Now, if I were a statistician I’d be wondering how much of that Slumdog Millionaire buzz might influence people to go watch CC2C. I will never know the answer to that question.
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