India’s film industry waits for overseas markets to pick up

While big commercial Hindi films that appeal to the diaspora are yet to hit screens —with the exception of Akshay Kumar’s Sooryavanshi, trade experts said even Telugu films like Allu Arjun’s Pushpa-The Rise: Part One didn’t manage the kind of numbers hits like Baahubali: The Conclusion had, before the pandemic.

While big-ticket Hollywood films could have posed some competition, audiences abroad, like in domestic markets, are also becoming more discerning with a variety of entertainment options available to them.

In its opening weekend in December, Pushpa had made around $1.05 million in the US, while Baahubali had clocked in $10.3 million when released in April 2017, according to figures from trade website Bollywood Hungama. Sooryavanshi, on the other hand, had managed $1.3 million over the Diwali weekend in November.

In 2019, overseas film shows had accounted for ₹2,700 crore of the total of ₹19,100 crore made by filmed entertainment, according to the Ficci-EY media and entertainment industry report.

“The numbers of Pushpa may be considered decent for these difficult times, but they are nowhere near the pre-covid gold standards of Baahubali,” independent trade analyst Sreedhar Pillai said.

About 60% of overseas business for Tamil cinema comes from Malaysia, a market that collapsed during the pandemic, Pillai said, while territories like Europe and the US too are yet to look up. Covid-19 has also been a major blow to the box office of Telugu cinema in the US, which had seen a boom in the country after Baahubali, leaving even Hindi films behind.

Bollywood fare has not enjoyed the same draw among overseas audiences over the past few years, Pillai said. Younger audiences are not so hooked to the current crop of stars and cinema, the way their parents were to mainstream commercial films featuring stars like Shah Rukh Khan in the 1990s.

Much like in India, southern language films were doing better abroad with stars like Pawan Kalyan, Chiranjeevi, and Arjun. Another deterrent in these difficult times could be the fact that tickets for Indian films are priced much higher than Hollywood titles abroad, since the market is anyway limited and distributors are looking to recover the cost of release, Pillai pointed out.

Film producer, trade, and exhibition expert Girish Johar said it is clear that audiences abroad are not stepping out the way they used to. However, with only niche titles like Badhaai Do having hit screens until now, there is still some reason for optimism, in the coming weeks, starting with Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Gangubai Kathiawadi and Ajith’s Tamil film Valimai, both of which are scheduled for next week. Next month, there is Akshay Kumar-starrer Bachchan Pandey and Baahubali director S.S. Rajamouli’s RRR that is looking at a massive release in markets like the US.