Bollywood in 2013: A birthday, a record and a golden girl

They say Indians have two loves: Cricket and cinema. The extent to which the latter influences an ordinary Indian’s daily life and culture is overwhelming.

Happy hundredth!

Bollywood, or the Mumbai-based movie industry, turned 100 last year in 2013, and it had much to celebrate.
Rising from its humble origins in the silent era, it gradually blossomed into the glamorous world of superstars and celebrities.
The centennial celebrations included the release of two movies that paid tributes to Bollywood.
“Bombay Talkies” comprised four short stories inspired by India’s love of movies, created by four of the country’s leading filmmakers: Zoya Akhtar, Karan Johar, Anurag Kashyap and Dibakar Banerjee. The movie had a special gala screening at the Cannes film festival last year, where India was honored as the “guest country.”
Its release comes 100 years after the opening in Bombay (now Mumbai) of “Raja Harishchandra,” the first Indian silent feature film, based on the story of a virtuous king from the Hindu epic Mahabharata.
“Alam Ara” (The Light of the World) in 1931 was India’s first talkie, a film with sound. Efforts through digital technology are on to restore and preserve cinematic gems such as films made before 1950, of which almost 70 percent have been lost.
“Celluloid Man,” the award-winning second film pays homage to the founder of the National Film Archive of India, P. K. Nair.

Of revenues and records

The year 2013 has been a record-breaking one for Bollywood at the box-office, with three films grossing over 200 crore rupees and five films entering the 100-crore rupee club.
The Indian film industry produced more than 1,500 movies last year in various languages, with Bollywood leading the way.
However, regional cinema, including Kollywood (Tamil cinema) and Tollywood (Telugu cinema), is emerging as a major player in the industry as it is set to grow by around 11.5 percent over a five year period, hitting 193 billion rupees ($3.1bn) by 2017, according to a FICCI-KPMG report.
The expansion comes as a result of a growing middle class population and plans to build more multi-screen cinemas.
The Indian media and entertainment industry is predicted to rake in revenues of $100 billion in 10 years’ time.
Bollywood alone was estimated to be worth $2.2 billion in 2012.
Indians buy 2.7 billion movie tickets annually, the highest in the world.
Although Bollywood has surpassed Hollywood in the number of tickets sold, it still lags far behind in terms of revenue because of the much lower prices of tickets in India.
For a film-crazy nation like India, there are still very few cinema screens. The country has fewer than 13,000 screens compared with nearly 40,000 screens in the US.

A ‘Dhoom’ year for Deepika
The year 2013 truly belonged to the two Ds: “Dhoom 3” and Deepika.
The third film in the Dhoom franchise, “Dhoom 3,” smashed box office records to become the highest revenue grosser of all time.
The action thriller starring Aamir Khan, is the first Indian film to cross the five-billion rupee mark in gross revenues around the world, according to its production house Yash Raj Films.
According to trade analysts, it had surpassed the previous highest-grossing Bollywood film, Shah Rukh Khan’s “Chennai Express.”
Trade expert Komal Nahta believes the record is huge and “won’t be easy to break anytime soon.”
The film not only did well in India, it also broke box office records in Pakistan with multiplexes running five consecutive shows of the film.
In Karachi alone, the film earned 20 million rupes and broke the record of Pakistani film ‘Waar’ that was released last year.
With four hit films in 2013, model turned actress Deepika Padukone catapulted to Bollywood’s A-list despite being neither of showbiz parentage nor from Mumbai.
Padukone’s Midas touch was visible in hits like “Race 2,” “Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani” (This Youth is Crazy), “Chennai Express,” and “Goliyon Ki Raasleela Ram-Leela” (The Battle of Bullets: Ram-Leela), an interpretation of Romeo and Juliet.
The actress brought Bollywood 600 crore rupees in business in 2013, a testinomy to her meteoric rise. No other star has achieved that milestone.
Padukone agrees that 2013 has been career-defining.
The 27-year-old has not always had it like that, although her debut film “Om shanti Om” was a hit.
Her 2010 films “Lafangey Parindey” (Rogue Birds), “Khelein Hum Jee Jaan Se” (We Play Wholeheartedly) and “Karthik Calling Karthik” all failed to impress the audiences.
With “Happy New Year” and “Finding Fanny Fernandes” among next year’s releases, and speculation rife that she has signed a three-film contract with Karan Johar’s production house, Padukone looks all set to continue her winning streak in 2014.