Confession time - prior to coming to work here I never harboured any burning desire to visit India. I'd been in this part of the world when I came to Sri Lanka for my honeymoon (magic), but Bangkok and Hong Kong featured higher on my 'to visit' list than either Delhi or Mumbai.
I was, however, keen to do work with India as far back as my
Unique days and even worked on digital cinema test footage of
KANK for Adlabs while at Deluxe/Capital FX. (Ask me in person what my then boss told me when I made a long pitch in 2006 about why we should target India). Perhaps I should not be so surprised myself that I ended up here, given what I've been telling others about the Rise of India as a financial and entertainment superpower.
The fact that it is slowly becoming an economic super power was brought home by the recent acquisition by Tata of Jaguar Land Rover and the proposed take over of the Motorola handset business by Videocon. The London Guardian was prompted to publish an article with the headline '
Is This The Indian Century?':
There's a common theme to these Indian takeovers, thinks Bajoria. "For years, globalisation was something the west did to the rest. Now the boot's on the other foot." How should westerners feel about that role reversal? "If I were them I'd be bloody worried." Then Bajoria, who knows the UK so well he can tell you the train times from Charing Cross to Tunbridge Wells, tries to think up some consolations, before giving up. "It's a big change. Of course I'd be worried."
A funny thing happened to the world economy this year: it tilted. Pretty much ever since the 60s, America had been the undisputed centre of business. It had the biggest economy; the No 1 economic model (or so the zealots kept telling everyone); the blue-chip banks; the world-beating businesses. Le défiaméricain was how France referred to Ford, IBM and the rest, meaning the American challenge.
Then came last summer and the biggest banking crisis America has had in decades. The economy? Almost certainly in recession. The model? Obviously, no longer so exemplary. The banks? Some of the biggest are being propped up by money from governments in the Middle East and China.
The most interesting trend right now is not the rise of India, but how India is overtaking China amongst the four
BRIC territories as a centre of attention for the media and entertainment industries. This came sharply into focus in private discussions I had at the recently concluded
FICCI Frames 2008. The growth and attention that the M&E India sectors are getting are understamdable given the 18 to 22 per cent CAGR in the sectors, numbers backed up by the ever excellent
Price Waterhouse Cooper report at FICCI.
I spoke to journalists from all three of the trades: Variety, Hollywood Reporter and Screen International. Two of them had sent their Asia correspondents based in Hong Kong and only one had a local report present. Both of the HK correspondents said that their HQ was putting pressure on them to ramp up their India presence and even more the Asia bureau to India. Disillusionment is setting in big time with China. Not only does the country restrict the number of Hollywood films shown in any year to 20, but recently the put a months' long ban on all Hollywood blockbusters. No one is holding their breath for the easing of these restrictions, as reported by the
BBC:
China Film's import section is notoriously sluggish in its evaluation and censorship of films. Their choice of films is notoriously confusing and lacks commercial nous.
Moneyspinning blockbusters are often ditched in favour of showing smaller scale films such as Proof of Life, Stepmom and Meet the Parents. Each grossed less than $1m (£690,000) in China.
It is believed that up to six distribution licenses will be issued, with the Shanghai Film and Television Group one of the first.
A US film executive told Variety: "China Film has done a poor job.
"They've been very inefficient in distributing US and Chinese films. They had their chance and they did not deliver."
Hollywood studios have tried to get around this by doing co-productions, but at the moment I was told that Chinese authorities had put 50 co-productions on hold, including the latest Jackie Chan film. This following the withdrawal of notable international cinema exhibitors from the Chinese market.
Yet despite these restrictions US films flourish at the Chinese box office, as reported by
Variety:
The Chinese film biz is certainly on a roll. China's B.O. surged 27% last year to $450 million. Two of 2007's top-grossing films, "The Warlords" and "Assembly," were Chinese co-productions, and Chinese films brought in $273 million from overseas sales last year, according to data from the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT).
Meanwhile, foreign, mostly U.S., pics constituted 46% of China's B.O. in 2007. Hollywood movies made $158 million in China, up 38% from the 2006 total. Chinese B.O. for "Transformers" was a boffo $38 million, making it the fourth-largest market in the world for "Transformers" after the U.S., South Korea and the U.K.
If there was unrestricted access to Hollywood content, chances are that it would marginalize Chinese domestic film content to levels of countries like Japan, i.e. closer to 25-35 per cent or less.
This will never happen in India, which will happily export more audio-visual content than it will import for the foreseeable future. And it is not because of any restrictions imposed by the government.
Take the three wide Hollywood releases this week playing at my local Inox cinema:
One Missed Call: 10.50am, 11.15pm
D-Wars: 10am, 11.15pm
The Bucket List: 1.40pm
Notice a trend? If you want to catch them it is early morning or late night at the multiplex. The reason is that Inox (and all other cinema operators) can't cram in enough screenings of popular local hits
123 and
Race.
Moreover, if Hindi film producers come across a Hollywood film the like, they will take the concept, give it a
desi twist and release the result to greater local box office success than the original. I took great pleasure in giving my US studio colleagues a DVD copy of Indian interpretations of 'their' films at ShoWest. Disney got '
Heyy Babyy' ('Three Men and a Baby'), Sony got '
Partner' ('Hitch') and Universal got '
Saalam-e-Ishq' ('Love, Actually'). If only I'd found a DVD copy of '
Fight Club: Members Only' to give to my friends at Fox.
This is not to show that Indian's are as good (or bad) as their Hollywood counterparts at re-making others' hits, but that Indian culture is more resistant to outside change than Chinese.
This was very well put in an interview with
Time Out Mumbai with French political scientist Christophe Jaffrelot, in connection with his book '
Patterns of Middle Class Consumption in India and China':
There's something in China that's sowing the ground for novelty in the global era. China has questioned its own traditions every 15 to 20 years over the last century. First there was the Communist Revolution, then there Great Leap Forward, then the Cultural Revolution and now capitalism. You don't find in China the kind of interest that you have with history in India. In India, change piles up through a process of accretion, but in China, it comes from wiping out and building up. This tabula rasa syndrome makes it easier for globalisation to take hold in China. In India, the resilience of tradition in culture – music and dance for instance – is strong and therefore India's cinema has been able to digest Hollywood. That doesn't mean that India is not part of the global dynamic. It is very much in it, partly because of the role played by the NRIs, especially those those living in the US – or between India and the US. In face, lifestyles conveyed by the diaspora is largely derivative – it comes from the American way of life and this is converging with the material inclinations of the Chinese middle class too.
That's why Chinese viewers flock in greater number to 'Sex and the City' than Indian ones. So it is not because I don't speak Mandarin or because it is a totalitarian one-party state busily oppressing Tibet that I don't live and work in China. It is because I believe that India faces a brighter future. But I still want to go and visit Hong Kong as a tourist.
While I've been impressed by the standard of multiplexes in India, which are as comfy as anything in the UK and US (and the Ebony Lounges are even more luxurious - see above), I've always been puzzled by the fact that a 'multiplex' in India is only four to six screens. This means that even with flexible programming of up to three to four different films per screen each day, the choice is often limited as the dame film tends to jump between screens and when a blockbuster like 'Race', 'Krazzy 4' or the up-coming 'Tashan' play, 80 per cent of screen real estate is booked up.
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