“As we started preproduction on the film, we knew that for the kind of efforts we were planning to put into the project, financial and otherwise, it would be sad if we didn’t at least attempt to go beyond our regional strongholds,” says Yarlagadda. In the UK, rather than the consolidated figure of the various versions charting as in North America, fragmented versions were listed, with the Hindi version bowing in sixth position, the Tamil one in ninth and the Malayalam and Telugu versions lower in the Top 20.Ĭreating and maintaining anticipation for the larger-than-life saga of warring cousins and fiery queens was a carefully calibrated task for producer Shobu Yarlagaddaof Arka Mediaworks, the company behind the films.
This included $1.8m from 45 Imax locations in North America, making it the highest ever opening in the format for a foreign language film. The film also collected $2.3m across 66 Imax screens around the world in its opening weekend. We have seen many Americans in the theatres who watched and appreciated the film.” “We factored some of that into our promotion and targeted non-Indians, and to some extent it worked.
Has the film broken out beyond Indian diaspora audiences to a broader audience? “Yes,” says Kancherla. Photograph: Brisbane Asia and Pacific Film Festival The conclusion had lived up to the expectations.”įemale empowerment saga … Parched, directed by Leena Yadav.
“Baahubali 1’s success and the curiosity factor had created a huge hype. “Baahubali 2 has the perfect blend of action, emotion and all the right ingredients that a moviegoer wants,” says Soma Kancherla, of the film’s US distributors Great India Films. With $17m and counting, it is the highest grossing Indian film of all time in North America. It easily outperformed the $123m collected by PK (2014), starring Bollywood icon Aamir Khan.īaahubali 2 consolidated this performance by delivering an extraordinary result in the US, opening in third position at the box office, above The Circle starring Tom Hanks and Emma Watson. The film opened on 28 April and grossed $194m in 13 days, making it the highest Indian grosser of all time and putting it on track to become the first Indian film to gross $200m. In this context, the numbers racked up by the “regional” Baahubali 2 – budgeted at $39m, made in Telugu and Tamil, with Hindi and Malayalam dubbed versions – are astonishing by Indian standards. In short, Bollywood has the visibility, but not the profits, with the under-performers far outweighing the hits. Domestic box office has remained stagnant at about $1.5bn and, while Bollywood might produce more films (Tamil had 291, Telugu 275, and Kannada 204 films in 2016), it contributes just a third of the box office gross. The bulk of the rest comes from the Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Marathi, Bengali, Punjabi and Gujarati languages. India produces an astonishing 1,900 films a year on average, of which Hindi-language Bollywood accounts for about 340. It is a common misconception that the Hindi-language, Mumbai-based film industry – known as Bollywood – is India’s national cinema.