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B-Town men struck gold in 2011
Bollywood struck gold in 2011, revving up lacklustre Box Offices in India with help from its leading men who wooed audiences back to cinemas after a dismal 2010.
Domestic revenues hit 19.25 billion rupees ($363.2 million) this year, up from 14.5 billion rupees in 2010, and an unprecedented four films crossed the billion rupee milestone. Two of those blockbusters starred actor Salman Khan.
The solid performance contrasted sharply to the previous year when there were hardly any hits.
"Audiences and filmmakers have gone back and discovered stories that are close to our Indian roots," said Sanjeev Lamba, Chief executive of Reliance Entertainment, which produced two of the year's biggest blockbusters -- Bodyguard and Singham.
Bodyguard, in which Khan plays a personal security guard to a rich man's daughter and ends up falling in love with her, was the most successful Bollywood film, raking in more than 1.5 billion rupees ($28 million) at domestic box offices.
Singham told the story of a right-minded police officer who stands up to a corrupt politician and was accompanied by romance, drama and high-octane action.
Both Bodyguard and Singham were panned by critics but loved by audiences. And both featured strong central characters, harkening back to the 1980s and early '90s in Bollywood when films were centred on the hero and his defeat of a villain in a battle of good versus evil.
"Audiences have always loved the dilemmas of the hero, a little bit of action, some drama and some romance," Lamba said. "We had a lot of that this year." Other themes were successful, too.
Offbeat films like The Dirty Picture, based on the life of a soft-core porn star, proved to be sleeper hits and took industry analysts by surprise. Together with the likes of Singham and Bodyguard, these smaller films proved audiences have an appetite for both mass market and niche-oriented work. "It is not that more people are watching movies, but that the same audience is watching more movies," said Shailesh Kapoor of Ormax Media, a firm that specialises in film market research.
But widely-hyped movies like superhero film RA.One were a let-down. In spite of a publicity blitzkrieg, actor Shah Rukh Khan's film did not live up to expectations with around 1.2 billion rupees ($22 million) in net Box Office. That was just a bit more than its official budget of a billion rupees. Industry estimates put the film's cost at over 1.5 billion rupees.
Aside from that, for the most part, Bollywood managed to keep its purse strings in check, with production houses learning that budgeting a film right is half the battle.
"Balaji Motion Pictures made The Dirty Picture at a budget of less than 300 million rupees but have chosen themes and subjects which are interesting, and (they) publicised their films so well that audiences have felt compelled to watch them," said industry analyst Vajir Singh.
Big studios like Reliance and UTV also have changed their business models, preferring to co-produce films rather than acquire them after completion. Last year, Reliance suffered losses after two big-ticket acquisitions, Mani Ratnam's Raavan and Hrithik Roshan-starrer Kites flopped at Box Offices.
"This year, all our films have been co-productions or our own productions and we have seen the successes," Lamba said.
"We prefer to be creatively involved from the beginning of the project rather than coming in at the end in an acquisition scenario."
Indian audiences also warmed up to Hollywood blockbusters including Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part 2 and The Adventures Of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn -- something that wasn't seen until just a few years ago due mainly to Bollywood's dominance of the Box Office.
"These days, the box office collections of good Hollywood films can rival those of a Bollywood film," said Sunil Punjabi, chief executive of the Cinemax chain of multiplexes.
The Adventures Of Tintin, which was released along with Ranbir Kapoor's Rockstar in November, made more than 70 million rupees its opening weekend.
Arjun Rampal in the latest issue of Hi! LIVING Magazine
The December issue of Hi! LIVING has the gorgeous Arjun Rampal, a doting father, astute businessman, loving husband and a party animal, talking about his much-awaited new show, Love2Hate, never giving up in spite of his series of flops earlier on in his career and how the ‘hot and sexy’ tag means little to him.
LIVING gives you a list of the ten most unusual party hotspots across the globe, known to host some of the wildest nights. If you are bored of the regular destinations, Tel Aviv, Budapest, Moscow, Ibiza and more should feature on your party list this year. Closer home, we scour the country to find the most exotic cocktails with mind boggling ingredients, like paan, popcorn, fish roe, cabbage, jalapenos and chaat masala… these crazy cocktails have it all!
A vineyard tour on horseback seems like a perfect way to end the year. Make your way to Chile, where you could sip wines that haven’t even been launched yet. The Indian Grand Prix in October was a triumphant success. Mohit Lalwani gives you a run-down of the --- event in Delhi.
7000 kilometers away, LIVING dines at Vienna’s Palais Coburg. The dishes that Chef Silvio Coburg serves up are nothing short of a divine experience. Also within its magnificent edifice is a wine list that dates back to the 19th Century. The cellars here run deep beneath the surface of the city, where one passes through the very roots of the city walls, the original structures upon which medieval Vienna was built.
All this and more in the spirited December issue of Hi! LIVING.
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Big Star Entertainment Awards 2011
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