Indian actor Hrithik Roshan and Uruguayian-born actress and model Barbara Mori, stars of the film Kites.

Bollywood, India’s Mumbai-based film industry, is the largest producer of films in the world, drawing in over 3 billion audience members a year worldwide. Although a large portion of audiences are Indian, Bollywood pop­ularity reaches to countries as varied as Germany and South Korea. As the last decade drew to a close, Hindi cinema revenues were over $2 billion. Although less than a tenth of Hollywood revenues, Bollywood is growing at four times the rate of Hollywood, and is expected to have doubled in size by the year 2012.

Nonetheless, American audiences have historically been apathetic toward Hindi cinema. The enormous success of Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire, however, indicated that things may be changing. Although the movie was produced by a U.K. company, it told the story of a young man from the slums of Mumbai and had several elements of Bollywood films. The film’s acclaim and positive buzz left American moviegoers reconsidering their stance on Bollywood cinema and industry execs intrigued by the possibility of a latent market for Indian films in the United States.

No one sees more potential in Bollywood-Hollywood relations than Indian media tycoon Anil Ambani. Ambani’s India-based film company, Reliance Big Pictures, has produced some of India’s biggest block­busters and has become Bollywood’s largest production company. Now Ambani’s eyes have turned toward Hollywood. After gaining a controlling stake in director Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks studio and striking deals with the likes of George Clooney, Julia Roberts, and Brad Pitt to produce their films, now Ambani aims to take over Hollywood’s famed Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio.

As boundaries between Bollywood and Hollywood begin to blur, a new genre of crossover cinema is open to emerge. Indian films are being created with American audiences in mind—and vice-versa. Kites, a Hindi film about mismatched lovers on the run in New Mexico, has been receiving one of the biggest pushes for crossover success. Re-edited to appeal to Americans, Kites is set for a global release in May of 2010. “For me it’s about breaking barriers,” said the film’s Indian star, Hrithik Roshan. “The larger goal, the big dream, is to have an Indian film being watched by a world market.”

Sources: Rhys Blakely, “When Holly Met Bolly,” The Times, July 16,2009, Business, p. 47; Anupama Chopra, “Bollywood Soars to Hollywood,” The New York Times, March 7, 2010, Section AR, p. 18; Anand Giridharadas, “Hollywood Starts Making Bollywood Films in India,” The New York Times, August 8, 2007, Section E, p. 1; Heather Timmons, “Bollywood goes to Hollywood, With Some Tinsel of Its Own,” The New York Times, June 23, 2008, Section C, p. 1

Questions for Discussion and Critical Thinking

1. Compare the ways that the earliest movie firms and the ones started by immi­grants tried to keep control over the movie business.

2. Why can it be said that the B movie part of Hollywood migrated to television?

3. In what ways are movie theaters at risk of losing audiences as a result of the growth of video and DVD rentals and sales, pay-per-view and cable showings, video on demand, and other venues? How about through piracy?

4. If the major U.S. movie companies make more money distributing their product outside theaters than in them, why is theatrical distribution so important?

5. Imagine you are a major media executive looking to produce a hit film. What are the basic steps you would have to go through to begin production?

Internet Resources

Motion Picture Association of America (http://mpaa.org/)

According to its website, the MPAA “and its international counterpart, the Motion Picture Association (MPA) serve as the voice and advocate of the American motion picture, home video and television industries, domestically through the MPAA and internationally through the MPA." The site contains much interest­ing data about the performance of the industry in the United States and abroad. It also presents the association's positions on piracy, film ratings, and U.S. mov­ies internationally.

Internet Movie Database (http://imdb.com/)

Owned (but seemingly not biased) by Time Warner, it is truly (in its own words) “the biggest, best, most award-winning movie and TV site on the planet.”

The Greatest Films (http://wmv.filmsite.org/filmh.html)

Tim Dirks has put together a fascinating and useful website that moves across film history by decade. The site also includes “quotes,” “genre,” and “reference” sections.

Writers Guild of America, West (http://www.wga.org/), Directors Guild of America (http:/Mww.dga.org), and Screen Actors Guild (http://www.sag.org)

They are the key labor unions for theatrical movies made in the United States. The websites present news about and for their members and insight into critical aspects of the movie business.