Is Bollywood Plus Hollywood Really A Win-Win Deal?

The Western film industry, which has traditionally viewed India merely as a market for its movies, is suddenly keen to tap into Indian capital and talent. In early summer, Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks closed a whopping $825 million co-production deal with Indian industrialist Anil Ambani’s Reliance Big Entertainment. And Charles Darby, the legendary British special effects artist who worked on epic movies like Titanic and Matrix, is building a special effects studio in Mumbai that he hopes will match rivals in London and Hollywood. Darby’s new Indian venture is financially backed by Eros International, a UK-based Indian film production and distribution house.

Is the Western film industry’s infatuation with India just a fad? Can it be sustained? While there clear opportunities for Western players in India, how can they overcome cultural and business barriers that could break down creative partnerships across borders? To answer these questions, our Centre hosted an event that explored how the Indian film industry is going global, its various engagement models with Western players, and the resulting opportunities for the international cinema industry.

Among the guest speakers were Anupam Kher, the international actor and global entrepreneur; Patrick von Sychowski, the COO of AdLabs, a Reliance Big Entertainment Company; Parminder Vir OBE, an executive producer and media consultant; Partho Sen-Gupta, an independent film director; and Simone Ahuja, a Principal at Blood Orange Media and a film director.

All speakers concurred that it’s the ideal time for the Indian film industry to engage with the West. The rapid growth of the Indian economy has spawned a savvy middle class seeking to watch world-class movies, while affluent producers like Reliance Big Entertainment are being wooed by cash-strapped Hollywood studios. Bollywood star Anupam Kher claimed that this is the “golden age” of Indian cinema, as it gains more in self-confidence and starts working with the West on its own terms.

Patrick von Sychowski of Reliance Big Entertainment walked us through the rationale behind his firm’s $1 billion plan to co-develop and co-produce movies with Hollywood heavy hitters like Steven Spielberg, Brad Pitt, and Julia Roberts. He explained that Reliance is keen to develop a success formula that seamlessly blends Western professionalism and Eastern creativity to systematically produce cross-border blockbusters such as Slumdog Millionaire that captivate the global audience.

Parminder Vir noted that after operating for decades as a parochial cottage industry the Indian film sector is finally getting more professional and its players are acquiring a global mindset as they internationalize their operations. She boldly predicted that in the coming decade, the Indian film industry would have a global socio-economic impact similar to what the Indian IT outsourcing industry achieved in the 2000s. She encouraged wary US and European producers and directors to warmly welcome the globalisation of Indian cinema as they stand to handsomely profit from it.

But not everything will be hunky-dory as East meets West in the global creative economy. In a panel discussion titled “How to Build and Orchestrate Transnational Creative Networks?” and moderated by Judge Business School Professor Jaideep Prabhu, the speakers addressed key business, legal, and social-cultural issues that could make or break cross-border co-production deals. They noted that while Chinese movies like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon have achieved huge international success, the Indian film industry has yet to produce a global blockbuster (Slumdog Millionaire being more an exception than the rule). But everyone agreed that it’s a matter of years (if not months) before India starts producing a steady stream of world-class movies from its mutually beneficial creative partnerships with the West.

What intrigued me the most during this event is the fact that many audience members (practitioners from the UK/European film industry) aired their concern that Hollywood is coming to India purely for financial reason and that the Indian cinema’s engagement with greedy Western partners will stifle its free-flowing creative spirit. I can’t disagree more: for millennia, invaders and traders have come to India in pursuit of economic gains. Rather than destroying India’s socio-cultural identity, these foreigners not only enriched it, but they found their own identity dramatically altered as they interacted with Indians.

The way I see it, Hollywood’s growing ties with Bollywood will be a two-way street, leading to a creative marriage that harmoniously mingles Hollywood’s structured approach to film-making with India’s flexible and tolerant mindset. As such, Hollywood will help accelerate the Indian film industry’s professionalization. In turn, as Anupam Kher quipped, “the Indian cinema, steeped in improvised creativity, will help uptight Hollywood loosen up a bit, and get risk-averse and profit-hungry Western producers to realize that film-making should ultimately be about having fun.” If that happens, then Hollywood’s partnership with Bollywood will turn out to be a win-win deal.