Hollywood beats Bollywood yet again
Indicine Team
The trend of Hollywood films beating the business of the Hindi film industry continued with this week's releases.
The Hindi releases were Ram Gopal Verma's Veerappan, Radhika Apte's Phobia and Naseeruddin Shah's Waiting. The Hollywood film Angry Birds' had a very limited release and the occupancy wasn't too high either, yet the business was almost as much as all the three Bollywood films combined.
Waiting and Phobia are disasters, with both the films collecting around 0.5 crore combined. Veerappan has a chance with the film collecting around 1.5 crore on Friday, but even that film needs big growth of 50-60% on Saturday to have any chance of doing well in the long run. Angry Birds has collected around 2 crore net.
With a limited release Hollywood films are now beating the combined business of small Bollywood releases and the big budget international films are now matching or surpassing the collections of films not starring the Top 5 stars in the country. It's time for our industry to analyse why the audience isn't giving smaller films a chance. Even films like Azhat and Sarbjit have struggled to not just recover costs but even to get a decent initial, even though the lead actors travel across the country to promote their films. On the other hand, Angry Birds and X-Men have had little or no promotion - yet have managed a decent initial on Friday morning.
It won't be long before the threat from Hollywood becomes more serious. 2015 was a turning point with films like Fast and Furious 7, Avengers and Jurassic World. 2016 has been bigger and The Jungle Book remains the top grosser and the film to beat this year.
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