 | | | Total box office of top 20 Hindi movies in North America and the UK this year: Rs 150 crore | | Total box office of top 20 Hindi movies in North america and the UK in 2005: Rs 135 crore | | No. of hindi movies in the uk top 10 in past 12 months: nine, compared to seven british films | | If 1995 was the year Bollywood discovered the NRI audience with Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, 2006 is the year it celebrated their generous spending. With five films crossing the crucial $2-million (Rs 9-crore) barrier at the box office in North America, and two films crossing the £1-million (Rs 8.5-crore) rubicon in the UK, the overseas box office managed to become the single most profitable territory for several big-budget films this year. Just consider this: Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna made Rs 31 crore from North America and the UK alone, which accounts for over 35 per cent of its Rs 120-crore overall gross, while Fanaa made Rs 19 crore from North America and the UK, which is almost 20 per cent of its Rs 100-crore total. Okay, not enough to pop the bubbly yet. After all, Jet Li's Fearless, a Mandarin martial arts extravaganza, has earned $22 million (Rs 99 crore) in North America alone, but that is from 1,800 theatres, whereas Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna had the widest release of a Hindi movie ever in the US-a comparatively puny 94 screens. Trade analysts are, as they say, cautiously optimistic. This year, the total box office gross of the top 20 Bollywood films in the US is $14.6 million (Rs 66 crore), up from $11.9 million (Rs 53.5 crore) in 2005, while the gross of the top 20 films in the UK so far is £9.5 million (Rs 81 crore), compared to £9.7 million (Rs 82.5 crore) for the whole of last year-together the two territories account for half the overseas box office for Bollywood. What's more, the year isn't done. Gitesh Pandya, editor of BoxOfficeGuru, who routinely tracks Bollywood movies in the US, is exulting. Despite no Hindi release hitting more than 100 theatres, he says no other foreign language has had the quantity of hits as Hindi this year. He calls it a landmark year in terms of content, with movies being driven not just by stars but by stories as well, a comment echoed by Screen International's box office analyst Robert Mitchell, who keeps a close watch on Hindi films in the UK. Though Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna is only the third Bollywood title to gross £2 million (Rs 17 crore) ever, he says "solid returns" for less traditional titles such as Krrish and Rang de Basanti show a transcending of the conventional singing-and-dancing-while-keeping-family-values-intact formula. Though the big Bollywood films get a release in the West End cinemas in London, and are treated the same as world cinema-they have several screenings a day, have subtitles and are fairly easy to accommodate into a work schedule despite being three-and-a-half-hours-plus-the audience is still primarily desi. Says film historian and inveterate Hindi film watcher Rachel Dwyer, "The films still aren't reviewed much in the mainstream press. Indian distributors have only the occasional press show, so you have to know what's on from the Asian media." It's enough to race ahead of the unfortunate British film industry though. Last year, a record 74 Indian films were released in the UK, compared to just 61 British productions, and during the last 12 months, nine Bollywood movies had made it to the UK top 10, compared with just seven British ones. It's more ghettoised in the US, where critics prefer Indian arthouse cinema to Bollywood's extra-long extravaganzas, but with big studios such as UTV and Adlabs now entering the overseas distribution game, hitherto restricted to Eros and Yash Raj Films, Bollywood's mainstream visibility might increase. These players are willing to pay big money for the rights-UTV paid Rs 12 crore for Don, Adlabs paid Rs 9 crore for Krrish (and recovered Rs 24 crore) and has put up Rs 8 crore each for the forthcoming Jaan-e-mann and Umrao Jaan-and publicise the movies across media. Clearly, though, the peculiarities of nri audiences, the core target, will not change in a hurry. Lavish costumes, eyecatching jewellery, enough songs to dance to at weddings, and true bharatiya sentiments (little wonder then there are two Sooraj Barjatya movies, Hum Saath-Saath Hain and Main Prem Ki Diwani Hoon, in the all-time Hindi top 20 at the US box office). That's what audiences want. And that's what creates oddities such as Dosti, an anaemic tale of male bonding, which was the No. 1 Hindi film at the UK box office last year, making Rs 7.5 crore, almost half of its Rs 16-crore earnings, and the pretty but placid Paheli, which rode piggyback on its star Shah Rukh Khan (the all-time No. 1 star in the UK with 10 of the top 20 earners and in North America with six of the top 20 blockbusters), making Rs 12 crore in the US and the UK in 2005, half of its total overall gross of Rs 23 crore. No surprise then that the big brown pound is influencing casting decisions and location choices. Take Vipul Shah's Rs 30-crore Namaste London. It stars Akshay Kumar, the biggest Hindi film star in the UK last year (four of the top 10 earners in the UK were his movies), is based partly in London, and has dollops of sanskriti. A sure shot hit? We will know when it releases next year. .
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