The Hindu Business Line : Lining up for the action

At a trade conference in New Delhi recently, Sony Pictures Releasing of India or SPR (formerly Columbia Tristar Films India) put itself firmly on top of the Hollywood heap in the country.

The meet, which hosted the big distributors and exhibitors of North India, had Managing Director Uday Singh claiming 51 per cent of the market share, an oblique but pointed reference to the fact that the other biggies — Warner Bros, Paramount, Miramax, and the independents — have had to be content with dividing up the rest of the pie.

SPR India puts the ticket sales of its movies released in 2004 at over Rs 100 crore — the first time it scaled that magic figure was in 2000. In those years, Spiderman 1 and Spiderman 2 grossed Rs 62 crore, among the highest Hollywood earners in the country. The studio also claims that the Rs 7.8 crore it made for the opening weekend of Spiderman 2, is an all-time record. "It has taken us five years to reach here," said Singh, who joined the studio nine years ago and has overseen much of its innovative fast-tracking. "The real action starts now."

These figures are insignificant when you compare the money a single Bollywood hit makes — say, a Devdas with Rs 40-crore plus, or a Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham at about the same, or even a comparatively smaller film like Black which grossed about Rs 25 crore, or a Gadar, which mopped up Rs 65 crore.

India is the only country, other than perhaps China, which has managed to withstand an almost-complete colonisation by Hollywood (most of Europe is just about fighting back, with Germany and France leading the pack). Hollywood makes up a paltry 5 per cent of the total market share in India. But for all that, competition among the top Hollywood studios is getting fiercer by the day. Several Hollywood movies have as big a face value, if not bigger, as any Bollywood movie. A Harry Potter or Spiderman can arouse as much anticipation among metro audiences and the media as, say, a Parineeta or Sarkar. Also, with the increasing importance of multiplexes, where the value of one ticket is equivalent sometimes to two or three sold in a single-screen, you can have a situation where the big Hollywood film, pitted against the average Bollywood movie, can do as well, if not better.

Singh believes that the studio's strong line-up (in India, SPR also distributes Buena Vista and Walt Disney movies, as well as what it calls `local products' — movies in Hindi and other languages) is the primary reason for its position right now.

He also believes that the distributors, having achieved a countrywide spread over the last five years, are responsible for SPR being where it is. This networking has also enabled the studio to work closely with such partners in trying to understand the needs of the market, which changes characteristics and requirements every 100 km.

Apart from the thumping success of Spiderman, the studio says it has grown the animation market with last year's The Incredibles, one of the smartest, funniest animation movies in recent years. It got Shah Rukh Khan to do the lead actor's voice in its Hindi version, Hum Hain Lajawaab, roped in his son to voice one of the little incredibles, and won a great deal of media mileage from it. The film grossed Rs 3.25 crore from both the English and Hindi versions.

This year, it has a slew of big releases. First off the block, on July 29, Herbie: Fully Loaded brings back the lovable Beetle onto our screens; The Legend Of Zorro takes up where The Mask Of Zorro has left off; a popular TV serial witch gets a movie face in Bewitched with Nicole Kidman; and Russell Crowe plays a heroic boxer from America's depression era in the much talked-about Cinderella Man.

In November come the world's best loved chicken squawks in Chicken Little, and the year-end will bring the big screen version of C.S. Lewis's children's classic The Chronicles of Narnia, which, going by the brief snatches one saw at the Sony conference, looks magnificent. It has both the feel of good old-fashioned story-telling as well as visuals that take you into the magical world of Narnia and its young heroes.

Then there is Ramji Londonwaley, a Hindi film starring Madhavan, who is still looking for success in North India. About a cook who goes to London, wins friends and influences people by his affable ways, Ramji... is being positioned as a comedy that should work both in metro and non-metro centres, a feat becoming increasingly difficult for most movies.

Judging by the not-too-exciting performance of its much-publicised horror film Naina, SPR needs to re-jig its choice of Hindi distributions. And yes, the studio is "definitely interested in getting into production", says Singh, but won't be pinned down to a date. Some time soon, he says, before heading off to meet other distributors and exhibitors gathered at the conference who, he knows, are responsible for just how well or badly any film does, especially a Hollywood dub in the Hindi heartland.

One Delhi-based distributor who played Hum Hain Lajawaab not so successfully, asks, not quite rhetorically, "Yeh sab Hollywood Wollywood kitne log dekhte hain". He's right. In sheer numbers, a Shah Rukh Khan will always score over a Tom Cruise. But there are enough people who want to see a Cruise, to make the effort worthwhile for major studios. Hollywood might have only 5 per cent of the market right now, but all indicators say that they have only one way to go — up.

Response can be sent to life@thehindu.co.in

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