![]() "It's just the more comfortable experience for the viewer," Zohrabi said, referring to the rise of the streaming services. Over the past couple of years, the rise of streaming services like Netflix, Disney+, Hotstar, Amazon Prime Video, and local variants like SonyLIV and Zee5, has meant that people have unlimited content at their disposal.Ī quarter of India's 1.4 billion people now use such services, up from about 12% in 2019, according to market data firm Statista. Rise of streaming services and high cost of watching filmsĮven as theaters reopen, the film industry has not been successful in attracting filmgoers back to the cinema for a number of reasons. That's about double the failure rate of 39% in 2019, before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Of the 26 releases this year, 20 - or 77% - have been flops, defined as losing half or more of their investment, according to the Koimoi website, which tracks industry data. "In our industry, all publicity is good publicity for films, at least to some extent," she told DW, explaining that good content would be able to pull viewers to the cinema, even if it is by word of mouth.ĭata shows that most Bollywood films released this year have so far failed and ticket sales have fallen every month since March. The truth is the content just didn't work," said Sanaya Irani Zohrabi, a creative producer at RSVP Films, an Indian film production company. "I don't think hashtags and social media campaigns are the primary reason some films are not doing well. While Khan and some other actors and film producers blame the boycott calls for the failure of their films, not everyone agrees. Right-wing critics of Khan had called for a boycott of the film because of comments made by the actor in 2015 that they deemed to be unpatriotic. 'Laal Singh Chaddha' - an adaptation of the 1994 US film 'Forrest Gump' - has failed miserably at the Indian box office Image: Paramount Pictures/Everett Collection/picture alliance It has only made around 560 million rupees (€7 million, $7 million) in ticket sales - about a quarter of its budget - despite being released on August 11, on the eve of a festive long weekend. The film took over a decade to produce - from purchasing the official rights for the movie to adapting the screenplay for an Indian audience - but went on to tank at the box office. The most recent victim of the so-called troll brigades was actor Aamir Khan's long-awaited adaptation of the 1994 US film "Forrest Gump" - "Laal Singh Chaddha." For a while now, there has been a concerted effort to break this system down by evoking middle class discourses like nepotism and nationalism," she noted. "It's also one of the most potent popular culture interests in South Asia, so naturally it's a desirable platform to use for propaganda. It has a pre-partition legacy and isn't necessarily a caste or class-based occupation," Suhasini Krishnan, a 28-year-old New Delhi-based media professional, told DW. I think the industry is one of the last bastions of democracy. "It's a decoy to paint Bombay films in a certain light to leverage the medium for their own agenda. ![]() Some in the film industry call these campaigns part of a larger tool to subvert freedom of expression in the arts. New hashtags, like #boycottbollywood, #boycottbollywoodforever, or ones targeting particular films, like the recently released mythological fantasy drama "Brahmastra," trend on Twitter every day. The Hindi film industry, based out of India's financial capital Mumbai and more popularly known as Bollywood, has been attempting to make a strong comeback after nearly two years of coronavirus-induced cinema closures.īut as multimillion-dollar projects make their way to the big screen once again, online campaigns calling for a "boycott" of Bollywood are dampening the comeback.
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