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Shubhra Gupta

Films from Bollywood might find the going tough, but the ones from Hollywood have had a good run this year in India.

A still from the film, `Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets'.

Hollywood may still be a measly three to four per cent of the Bollywood market in India, but this year has seen some major gains. Most importantly, the gap between the US and Indian release has shrunk, so in some instances we've had access to spanking new movies within weeks: Columbia Tristar released `Spiderman' within three weeks of its US opening, and it went on to rake in Rs 30 crore in its English and dubbed versions, a higher gross than most hapless Bollywood products.

Collection-wise, it's been good; content-wise too, it's been a better than average year. There have been stylish thrillers, starting with `Ocean's 11' (where 11 guys, headed by the dishy George Clooney and the dishier Brad Pitt, aided by screen diva Julia Roberts, pull off a daring bank job), and the more recent ones like `Insomnia' (three Oscar winners, Al Pacino, Robin Williams, and Hillary Swank battle their personal demons in a stylish murder mystery); two of the biggest hits worldwide after `Spiderman', Warner Brothers's `Harry Potter', and its sister concern New Line's `The Lord Of The Rings' (TLORT) were successful early summer releases in India (`Harry' made $318 million in the US alone, and picked up and additional $500 million in merchandising, which was significantly higher than `TLORT' earnings; this time around the second part of JRR Tolkien's fabulous fabulist tale is expected to better than the Potter sequel).

Apart from the movies, which were aimed at the mass market with multi-dubbed versions, there were the films, which were multiplexed in smaller screens in the major metros. Sam Mendes's `Road To Perdition', which wasn't as startlingly original as `American Beauty' blipped out soon, as did heavy-weight Oscar winners `Iris', and `In The Bedroom': from the trade's perspective, they may have been losses, but the fact that they made an appearance, however brief, makes it a happy situation for the discerning viewer. The fact is that these movies had slender pickings in the US, too; the fact is that fast-paced adventure tales or special effect extravaganzas featuring comic-strip heroes who save the world, spell magic at the box office, whether it is Indian or abroad.

There are other ways in which Hollywood is increasing its presence in the country. While major studio Warner Bros. is content with promoting and showcasing its own films, Columbia Tristar, a subsidiary of Sony Pictures Entertainment, is spreading its wings in the distribution sector, with outside productions, in addition to their own movies. In fact, Columbia's operations currently have moved far beyond the standard Hollywood studio practice of being essentially the supplier of content. "Unlike other concerns, we don't operate either on a sell-off model or on loosely structured alliances," says Gaurav Sharma, National Alliances Manager, Columbia Tristar Films of India Pvt Ltd. "We are the only company which has a pan-India distribution set-up, with our five zonal offices, so people are assured of a well-oiled network, with our exclusive tie-ups with local distributors."

We meet on the Friday of the release of `Austin Powers — Goldmember', at the buzzy PVR Saket, favourite hang-out of New Delhi's well-heeled cinegoers, where Sharma wants to do a check on how his movie has opened.

But the theatre is sparsely populated, both inside and outside. Clearly, Mike Myers in his raunchy spoof-of-a-Bond-spoof hasn't found too many takers on its first evening: a) an India-West Indies one-dayer is in progress, b) it's generally a bad times at the movies, and c) really, who knows what an increasingly capricious audience wants. "This is a hit and run business. The opening weekend is crucial so we open lots of theatres simultaneously," says Sharma, "in a situation where the flop rate is 90 per cent, the only way out is to saturate the market, and corner the trade and consumer mind."

Working on the belief that it is all about positioning the right product at the right place, Columbia, which has been in India for the past 35 years, got into distribution only a few years ago. Its first Hindi outing was `Pyar Mein Kabhi Kabhi', a college romance which bombed. In the last couple of years, their activities in this sector have picked up pace, with collaborations with forward-thinking production houses such as iDreams, and Pritish Nandy Communications: recent releases such as `Monsoon Wedding', `Agnivarsha', `16 December', `Bend It Like Beckham', and `Sur' have all been high-voltage, and apart from `Sur', have all been in the money. Plans to get into regional movies are being firmed up, as well.

Apart from the twin advantages of "better marketing and a national distribution chain", Columbia, with a presence in 67 countries, offers a transparency in business ethics, something that is sorely missing in this trade. "Unlike others in the trade, I won't, for example, pay a Ram Gopal Varma, anybody else, for his movie. There is a premium attached to a Columbia release," he says. "A producer will get the last paisa that is owed to him and his product."

Shedding its elitist image, Columbia is now moving towards a grassroots model, by strengthening the distribution chain. "For an exhibitor in Uttarachal, it's very hard to keep coming to Chandni Chowk (a prominent Delhi market from where distribution outfits traditionally operate) to source movies," he says, "the idea is to make the business of supply easier, so we in the process of appointing sub-agents in Dehradun and Gorakhpur."

From local to global: Columbia was first one to reduce the release window to three weeks in India with its `Spiderman'; next summer it hopes that Arnold Shwarznegger's `Terminator 3', the third of the series which has proved as wildly popular in India as the rest of the world, will open the same day here as in the US.

The author can be reached at Shubhrag@vsnl.com

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