The Indian film industry is a huge and successful billion dollar (or rupee equivalent) industry . How come there are no worldwide hits like the American movie industry has?
see Bollywood World
It may be because Hollywood has already seen to it that the world has developed a taste for Hollywood movies. A palatte accustomed to such fare will often reject Bollywood. It may also be simply that the Indian film industry has not put the same money and effort into worldwide distribution and publicity as the American film industry.
Besides Hollywood dominance of the distribution industry I can say this.
Bollywood movies are all long. Typically 4 hours. Plus they’re all musicals. Ok, that’s hyperbole but I do have it on the authority of the Indian tech workers that work at my mother’s bank.
Also consider the ‘it takes money to make money’ principle. It’s only in the last few years that movie budgets in India have been racketed up.
One more, it’s really hard to have a blockbuster hit without making it in the US. We spend a lot of money on movies and since most Indian movies are not completely in English we don’t go to them in droves. I mean if we have an ad for a non-English movie you can always tell because they never a let the characters talk.
I’ve seen a few big budget Indian movies “Lagaan” and “Asoka” to name 2. While they were certainly good they had the same flaws you generally associate with big budget movies. The music video parts were quite off-setting in “Asoka”, a biographical drama. I mean imagine if at the trial scene in “JFK” a song and dance bit broke out. Very off-putting to Americans of today.
Aren’t Bollywood movies geared specifically for an Indian audience? Especially with all the musical numbers and dancing bits?
I mean, say what you will about the decline of Hollywood cinema, but when Arnold Schwarzenegger gets pissed off at someone and detonates their car fifty feet into the air, that’s something which can be easily understood by moviegoers worldwide. 
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- An Indian co-worker once told me that Bollywood action movies often have musical numbers during the big ending shootouts… -From the things he related, I gathered that to the average American, Bollywood movies would seem more than a bit odd.
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- Also, to say that Bollywood has lots of fans is a fairly easy claim to make, but most of those fans are in the region of India and share at least some cultural similarities. - DougC
Too bad Bollywood doesn’t get its props out here. We’re missing some terrific movies!!
Actually it has a lot of fan right Here in America. For me it started with the Bombay the Hard Way album by Dan the Automator and DJ Shadow in about 1996, which was an album of remixes of 1970s hindi gangster movie music with a hip-hop beat. Since then it has been on the radar for many people, There have been several music videos in the style of Bollywood movies as well as a definite influence in Hollywood- Moulon Rouge definitely copped a little Bollywood style, Ghost World featured a dance sequence from Gumnaam. It’s definitely an up and coming flavor, although for mainstream audiences it will have to be toned down- I saw a movie where a musical number started in the middle of a car chase.
:smack:
Forgot to make my point.
Which means maybe they can barely make 3 or 4 showings per screen per day. Where’s a short 90 minute American movie could more then double that. And since you pay per movie, not per movie minute they are hampered financially in that way. Even with with heavy editing. Check out Lagaan. A 225 minute movie. But note this is the edited American version, the Indian version was 240 minutes long.
With an potential audience of about 1 sixth of the earths population maybe they don’t really need or want to cater to International tastes.
Another factor is that making a movie and distributing it are two different processes. Getting a good distribution deal lined up, which covers the major global territories, can be as difficult as making the movie in the first place. With ‘obvious’ hit movies of course there’s little problem - international distributors will fight for the rights. With everything else, it can be very hard to persuade a distributor that they want to take on the hassle and risk of trying to distribute a movie that doesn’t have ‘obvious global hit’ written all over it.
I agree. Nobody is as good at marketing and distribution as Americans are. A major contributing factor to that is the piles of money many American businesses have to throw around, too.
I think an even bigger factor is that Indian movies reflect Indian culture, which is nowhere near as widespread as Anglo-Saxon culture. (the Anglo-Saxon influence on India itself really wasn’t all that great, in the long run)
Since Anglo-Saxon culture is more widespread, more people are familiar with it. So Indian films probably seem a little strange and alien to such people. Look at Jackie Chan’s films. He works in Hong Kong, a very British place. He’s made a lot of films in his day, but the only ones that really hit it big here were stuff like “Rumble In the Bronx” or “Rush Hour,” which are set in the U.S.
“The Legend of Drunken Master” is superior to both those films, but it’s also set in Asia. It never even got released here.
Um, we’ve given Hong Kong back now. (Also it never rained in the same way as here in Britain.)
I love Jackie Chan movies - full of skill and entertainment. 