Bollywood banks on India’s ‘Top Gun’ to extend box office revival

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Bollywood is banking on its star-studded answer to Top Gun, premiering this week, to extend a run of blockbusters that has lifted India’s box office revenues to all-time highs and yanked the giant entertainment industry out of a historic slump.

Fighter, a patriotic action film in which heart-throb megastars Hrithik Roshan and Deepika Padukone play elite air force pilots doing battle with Pakistani enemies in between extravagant dances on the beach, was released on Thursday amid high expectations it will continue the lucrative run.

Box office collections rose to a record Rs122bn ($1.5bn) in 2023, according to data from consultancy Ormax Media. It marked a turnaround after a series of pandemic-era flops left Bollywood, the Hindi-language industry that has traditionally dominated India’s box office, losing market share to Hollywood and regional southern Indian-language studios.

Analysts and film critics say the revival came after producers doubled down on visually rich, macho action flicks — a recipe mastered by southern Indian cinema — and Hollywood-style franchise models to lure audiences back to cinemas.

Examples include the highest-grossing film of 2023, Jawan, which starred India’s biggest actor Shah Rukh Khan as a vigilante anti-hero battling a corrupt tycoon, and Animal, the second most commercially successful film that was widely criticised for its misogynistic themes. Both were directed by south Indian cinema veterans.

“It’s the big-ticket, star-driven, larger-than-life films which are bringing audiences to the theatres,” said Namrata Joshi, a film critic.

These films are “a lot louder, more melodramatic and very, very male-driven”, she said. “The rest of the films, what we used to call the mid-budget films . . . are ending up on the streaming platforms.”

This shift towards an ever smaller number of highly anticipated releases has proved lucrative for cinemas, with the country’s top chain PVR Inox last year announcing plans to expand and upgrade its network of about 1,700 screens.

It has also allowed them to charge customers more: the average ticket price rose to a record of Rs130 last year, according to Ormax, meaning that the total audience size actually fell, even as revenues rose.

However, global entertainment groups have struggled to make a mark in India, often proving unable to beat local competitors on price or make content with mass appeal.

A planned merger between Sony and Indian group Zee — the studio behind another 2023 hit, Gadar 2 — fell apart this week amid a dispute over everything from Zee’s financial performance to corporate governance.

Disney, which operates a studio in India, is considering selling a majority stake in its local business to Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries, as it looks to control costs. Streaming platforms such as Netflix have also struggled to scale amid fierce local competition.

Analysts warn that with megastars such as Khan not expected to release any films this year, Bollywood may not be able to sustain the record-breaking run. But the larger-than-life formula is unlikely to change, they say, pointing to upcoming releases such as sci-fi fantasy film Kalki 2898 AD and comedy-action flick Welcome to the Jungle.

“There’s been a lot of experimentation in terms of what content to make,” said Sanket Kulkarni, head of theatrical business development at Ormax. “Every studio has now figured out that they need to release one or two big films, so they’ll be reallocating their budgets to create these big magnum opuses.”