Indian Language Movies Are Underrated

Indian language movies have come a long way over the last few years!

 

From their initial standard three hour long flicks featuring action-packed drama, tears, catchy and sing-along songs, extravagant dancing and colourful traditional costumes – being produced solely for domestic consumption, to having varied time lengths dictated by their content, and witnessed across the globe in countries such as United States, Canada, Australia, Taiwan, China, Russia, Turkey – in either their original form with subtitles or dubbed versions of its original form.

 

Movies from India are no longer restricted to Bollywood which produces movies solely in the national language (Hindi). India, in line with the varied languages and dialects in the country, is also home to other powerhouse movie industries such as:

Bollywood – Mumbai-based Hindi language film industry, India

Pollywood – Punjabi language film industry in India and Pakistan

Bhojiwood – Film industry of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, India in Bhojpuri language

Chhollywood – Chhattisgarhi language film industry based in Chhattisgarh, India

Tollywood – Bengali film industry in West Bengal, India/Telugu film industry in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana

Kollywood – Tamil language film industry, based in Chennai, India./Nepal’s film industry

Mollywood – Malayalam film industry in Kerala, India

Sandalwood – Kannada language film industry in Karnataka, India.

Jollywood – Assamese language film industry in Guwahati, Assam

Ollywood – Film industry of Orissa, India in Oriya language

 

The Indian-film industry also comprises of globally recognized actors and actresses who are passionately dedicated to provide the best of their skills and talent to the industry:

 

Bollywood

Amitabh Bachchan, Salman Khan, Shahrukh Khan, Aamir Khan, Akshay Kumar, Ranveer Singh, Priyanka Chopra, Deepika Padukone and Katrina Kaif

 

Kollywood

Rajinikanth, Vijay, Ajith Kumar and Nayanthara

 

Tollywood

Mahesh Babu, Prabhas, Anushka Shetty and Rakul Preet Singh

 

As a result of these film stars having huge fan-followings from around the world, they too have helped attract large audiences to watch Indian movie releases in cinema.

 

A recent report by PWC indicates that Bollywood is set to become the third largest cinema market in the world.

 

In recent years, there have been numerous Indian language movies that have done relatively well at the worldwide box office:

 

 

Bollywood movies easily make up the second largest watched language in the UAE – with some blockbusters raking in 300,000 plus admissions. Other Indian language movies – which include Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu, have also gained massive popularity and acceptance in accordance with Hindi movies.

 

Below is analysis conducted by Motivate Val Morgan on Indian language movie releases across the Middle East in 2018:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In October 2019, Motivate Val Morgan – in collaboration with Murdoch University Dubai, also conducted cinema research in the UAE in the form of questionnaires and video interviews at VOX Cinemas – City Centre Deira and Burjuman (two prominent locations for Asian movie audiences).

 

The objective of this research project was to understand cinemagoing habits of Asian audiences and measure the effectiveness of cinema advertising alongside Indian language movies..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As the research above indicates:

• Indian language movies are well received in the UAE
• A majority of Asian movie audiences are relatively young (between ages 15-35)
• Indian movie audiences arrive in time to watch cinema ads
• They enjoy and pay attention to cinema ads
• A majority recall between 2-4 cinema ads

 

Here’s a line-up of Indian language movies scheduled to release over the months ahead:

December 2019

Pati Patni Aur Woh (Hindi)

 

Panipat (Hindi)

 

Mardaani 2 (Hindi)

 

Good Newwz (Hindi)

 

Mamangam (Malayalam)

 

 

January 2020

Tanhaji: The Unsung Warrior (Hindi)

 

Darbar (Tamil)

 

Ala Vaikunthapurramloo (Telugu)

 

Sarileru Neekevvaru (Telugu)

 

Street Dancer 3D (Hindi)

 

Don’t miss out on targeting large Asian movie loving audiences. Contact us for cinema advertising opportunities alongside the movies mentioned above!

 

 

Sources: Wikipedia, WARC, MVM Analysis, MVM Research and IMDb

Target Large Audiences with One of the Biggest Indian Releases of 2018

2.0 – the sequel to Enthiran (2010), will unite the best of talent from Kollywood and Bollywood – Rajinikanth and Akshay Kumar. The movie is set to release in cinemas (worldwide) on 29^th November and will undoubtedly be one of the biggest Indian language movie releases of 2018.

Trivia:

• Estimated movie production budget of US$75M
• Besides Tamil, Hindi and Telugu, the movie will release in 12 other languages
• Akshay Kumar will make his Tamil debut with 2.0 – playing the villain
• 2.0 will be the first film in which Rajinikanth and Akshay Kumar will share the big screen
• This will be the first Indian film directly shot in 3D
• The film contains approximately 900+ visual effects
• The teaser trailer – which released on 13^th September 2018, garnered 32 million views in just 24 hours

 

 

Both Rajinikanth and Akshay Kumar have a devoted fan base across the region, with their movies being well received.

 

Here’s a look at movie successes starring Rajinikanth:

 

Kaala (2018)

 

Kaala was released (worldwide) on 7^th June 2018 in three languages – Tamil, Telugu and Hindi. In the UAE, the film earned AED 3,403,631.

 

Kabali (2016)

 

There was a different kind of hysteria among Rajinikanth fans as Kabali was the first movie in which the action hero played a role of his own age.

In the GCC, over 200 theatres (including 100 screens in the UAE) screened the movie, and advance online bookings received overwhelming responses with many sessions running house full. According to a local distributor, there were approximately 151,000 tickets sold for in the first two days of release across the UAE.

The film had earned US$11.20 million in its first four-day weekend overseas, breaking the record previously held by Dhoom 3 (US$10.32 million) as the highest-grossing first weekend for an Indian film in overseas markets. According to International Business Times in May 2017, the film’s final overseas gross was US$15.65 million.

 

Enthiran (2010)

 

As of January 2018, Enthiran is the fourth-highest-grossing South Indian film of all time after S. S. Rajamouli’s two-part historical fiction films Baahubali 2: The Conclusion (2017) and Baahubali: The Beginning (2015).

According to a February 2015 report by Hindustan Times, the film has grossed approximately US$34.8 million (worldwide) in its lifetime.

 

Below are UAE statistics for movies featuring Akshay Kumar:

 

Brothers (2015) – screened for 4 weeks and did approximately 130,500 admissions

Rustom and Airlift (2016) grossed a total of AED 6,565,596 and 4,408,681 respectively

Toilet: Ek Prem Katha (2017) – screened for 3 weeks and did approximately 103,200 admissions

Jolly LLB 2 (2017) – screened for 5 weeks and did approximately 114,000 admissions

Padman (2018) – grossed a total of AED 3,162,845

 

Based on the success of previous Rajinikanth and Akshay Kumar movies (as indicated above) and the fact that Indian language movie fans (in this region) are not restricted to the expat population from the subcontinent, 2.0 is guaranteed to usher in large cinema audiences.

Don’t miss out on advertising alongside one of the biggest Indian language movies of 2018.

Contact a member of our sales team for more information on cinema advertising opportunities across the GCC.

 

 

Sources: YouTube, First Post, Wikipedia, The National and Gulf News