Indian cinema turns to high-octane movies to overcome box office ‘famine’

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India’s entertainment industry is banking on a solid line-up of local and Hollywood releases to drag it out of a blockbuster “famine” and get people back into cinemas after a series of flops.

Indian box office takings have fallen 7 per cent to Rs89.5bn ($1bn) from January to October, compared with the same period in 2023, according to Ormax Media.

But the Mumbai-based consultancy expects the strong performance from sequels and franchises, including Hindi-language horror-comedy Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3 and southern Indian macho thriller Pushpa 2: The Rule, to help reverse 2024’s relatively muted performance.

Ajay Bijli, the head of India’s largest multiplex operator PVR Inox, said the next financial year starting in April would see a “full slate” of domestic and international offerings, including the latest Mission Impossible and Marvel movies.

But Mumbai-centred Bollywood has been wrestling with a string of recent Hindi-language flops as viewers kept away from movie theatres following the pandemic.

Audiences have gravitated to high-testosterone action flicks from the country’s south, particularly those produced by the Telugu-language industry known as Tollywood.

Bijli said that the industry’s issues were to do with the “consistency of content connecting with the audiences”. Studios and cinemas struggled with either “feast or famine”.

“The volatility, the peaks and troughs, have become very, very pronounced post Covid,” Bijli said. “Content makers are grappling with what the consumer wants.”

In response to changing preferences, Bollywood has pushed out extravagant features that mirror some of the successful south Indian productions. Jawan, the highest grossing film of 2023 starring the country’s biggest actor Shah Rukh Khan, was directed by south India’s Arun Kumar, known professionally as Atlee.

This year, Jio Studios — the Indian film house owned by Asia’s wealthiest person Mukesh Ambani — has had a run of hits, including Singham Again, the latest in a cop action series that heavily references the Ramayana, a Hindu epic. Jio’s horror comedy Stree 2 had been one of the highest grossing Indian films of 2024.

Following a series of titles for digital-only release, more Indian studios are focusing on theatrical releases.

“For at least a couple of years, most of these [streaming] platforms were saddled with dead snakes around their neck and massively overpaid for content,” said Jyoti Deshpande, Jio Studios chief and president of the media and content division at Ambani’s conglomerate Reliance Industries.

“I think that correction has happened,” she added. “One must produce carefully, produce for theatrical [release] unless commissioned in advance by some platform.”

India’s box office revenue is now expected to expand at a 14 per cent compound annual growth rate to Rs237bn by 2028, according to a PwC report published this month.

Jio Studios is hoping to expand globally and is targeting deals with Hollywood. Deshpande said talks are on with US studios to collaborate more widely “on various tracks”, including co-production, distribution and superstar crossovers — whether big US names in Indian productions, or vice versa.

“Our talent in their films, their talent in our films . . . I think that’s the next phase,” Deshpande said about collaboration between Bollywood and Hollywood. “We haven’t scratched the tip of the iceberg.”

So far only a few Indian megastars, such as Alia Bhatt, Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Deepika Padukone, have acted in big-budget US features. Chopra Jonas has appeared in Hollywood flicks such as 2021’s The Matrix Resurrections and the 2017 cinematic remake of Baywatch. Bhatt made her Hollywood debut in the 2023 spy thriller Heart of Stone, while Padukone starred in the 2017 Vin Diesel vehicle xXx: The Return Of Xander Cage.

Deshpande predicted that India’s fragmented entertainment industry would enter a period of consolidation.

In October, Indian vaccine billionaire Adar Poonawalla marked his first foray into the film business. He spent $199mn to buy a 50 per cent stake in Dharma Productions, the studio headed by Karan Johar, the powerful Bollywood director behind blockbusters including romantic comedy Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and family melodrama Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham.

“It’s going to be survival of the fittest,” Deshpande said. “It’s going to be a big boys’ game.”