Bollywood outshines Hollywood - NEWSWEEK
WASHINGTON: Bollywood is going through a highly successful run, meeting and beating its famed US counterpart in many parts of the world, Newsweek reports.
The magazine notes that when a famous Hollywood film star, Sylvester Stallone, showed up at a film festival in Dubai in 1998, unfortunately for him, so did Bollywood’s biggest superstar, Amitabh Bachchan. While Bachchan was mobbed by wild fans, Stallone was ``pretty much ignored’'.
The West may have the biggest stalls in the world's media bazaar,'' says Newsweek, but it is not the only player. Globalisation isn’t merely another word for Americanisation - and the recent expansion of the Indian entertaiment industry proves it.‘’
For hundreds of millions of movie fans around the world, it is Bollywood, not Hollywood, that spins their screen fantasies. Bollywood, based in Mumbai, has become a global industry, says the Newsweek report.
A significant pointer to Bollywood’s growing global appeal was the result of the BBC poll last year in which viewers around the world pooled in their votes to declare the Allahabad-born Bachchan (57) as the millennium’s biggest star, even ahead of British legend Sir Lawrence Olivier and glamour icon Marilyn Monroe.
``Bachchan, or `the Big B’ to millions of Indian film fans, has been a megastar for three decades. His devotees, found everywhere from Rajasthani villages to Australian cities to New Jersey suburbs, are a passionate lot.‘’
``When you are incapable of achieving your dreams, even one per cent of them, you can achieve them with Bachchan,‘’ says Mohammed Galal, a 19-year-old Egyptian law student, emerging from a packed Cairo screening of a Bachchan box office hit.
Shows by Bollywood movie and music stars run to packed houses and keep the passion alive. Indian stars appear on stages in New Jersey, California, Florida and Chicago for sold-out concerts, the Newsweek report says.
Some 11,000 turned up to see megastar Shahrukh Khan, known for his devilish charm and dynamic acting'', in Chicago. The fans are crazy about him,‘’ says Hudda, manager of a video store in the city’s Little India, especially ladies''. Sex appeal, says Newsweek, is one way to sell movies to non-Indian audiences but in some developing countries, it is the non-American’’ quality of Indian movies that draws them.
``Given the chance between a Steve Martin divorce comedy and a (Indian) musical about the virtues of God and family, Arabs, Africans and South-East Asians often choose the latter,‘’ the report notes.
India’s music exports last year jumped from $10 million a decade ago to $100 million last year, and may top $250 million in 2000, the magazine says. ``That is peanuts compared to Hollywood’s $6.7 billion in overseas profits last year, but as the market has grown, even multinationals like Sony and Universal have taken a new interest in Indian entertainment.‘’