Factoids
What is Bollywood?
Who's Who in Bollywood
Business of Bollywood
Bollywood versues Hollywood
Regional movie Industries
Studios and Production Houses
What is Bollywood?
Bollywood is the name given to the Mumbai-based Indian film industry, which mainly makes Hindi language films.
Bollywood was derived from fusion of Bombay (now Mumbai) and Hollywood in order to give the growing Indian industry a catchy, easy-recall nomenclature.
Bollywood, when combined with other regional movie industries in India like Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Bengali, Assamese, Oriya, Bhojpuri and Malayalam, is the largest film industry in the world. It churns out more than 1,000 movies a year.
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Who's Who in Bollywood
Actors: Leading this brigade of stars is Amitabh Bachchan. The star actor is one of the few Indians to have his wax replica at the Madame Tussauds. Close on the heels of Amitabh is another Indian actor, Shah Rukh Khan, who has fans across the globe.
Other famous names in the industry include Salman Khan, Aamir Khan, Hrithik Roshan, Saif Ali Khan, Akshay Kumar, Sanjay Dutt, Abhishek Bachchan, John Abraham, Aishwarya Rai, Rani Mukerji, Preity Zinta, Bipasha Basu, Urmila Matondkar and Priyanka Chopra amongst others.
Directors: Yash Chopra, B.R. Chopra, Rajkumar Hirani, Karan Johar, Prakash Jha, Shayam Benegal, Farhan Akhtar, Sudhir Mishra, J.P. Dutta, Ramesh Sippy, Ashutosh Gowarikar, Govind Nihalani, Ram Gopal Varma, Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Vishal Bhardwaj and etc.
Producers: Yash Chopra, Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Aamir Khan, Ritesh Sidwani, Aziz Mirza, Ronnie Screwvala, Ratan Jain, Sajid Nadiadwala, Kumar Mangat, Ekta Kapoor, Subhash Ghai.
Singers/Musicians: Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, Kumar Sanu, Udit Narayan, Alka Yagnik, Sadhna Sargam, Sonu Nigam, Shreya Ghoshal, Anu Malik, Vishal-Shekhar, Ravindra Jain, Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy, Ismail Darbar.
Technicians: Mickey Contractor (make up artist), Farah Khan and Saroj Khan (choreographer), Allan Amin (action master), Binod Pradhan (Cinematographer), Vaibhavi Merchant (choreographer), Ravi K. Chandran (Cinematographer), Bela Segal (Film Editor).
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Business of Bollywood
The Indian film industry is set to top revenues of $3.3 billion by 2010 as it rides new technologies and a booming economy set to expand at the rate of 18 percent per year.
It is also one of the largest employment sectors in the country. The government of India gave the motion picture industry the status of an industry in 2001, making it easier for film producers to obtain institutional financing.
Before the reform, the filmmakers were hugely dependent on diamond merchants and underworld for finances.
Quite a few banks, including IDBI, Exim Bank and Bank of Baroda, are pumping money into movie-making business.
Recent statistics revealed that a record number of 74 Indian films were released in Britain in 2005. In the same year just 61 British productions made it to the marquees.
Amongst them nine Bollywood films entered the top 10 list of films compared with just seven British movies.
In terms of revenue, successful Bollywood films can now expect to make more than two million pounds at British box office despite expensive publicity and star casts.
The Industrial Development Bank of India (IDBI), which started off by investing Rs.70 million in the industry, is seen as the leader in this sector and has decided to double its investments to the tune of Rs.2 billion.
The recent Karan Johar blockbuster "Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna" starring the biggest names in the industry set a box-office record in North America with a $1.4 million collection in the opening week.
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Bollywood versues Hollywood
Bollywood sold a total of 3.6 billion tickets and earned revenues (theatre tickets, DVDs, television etc) of $1.3 billion, whereas Hollywood films sold just 2.6 billion tickets but generated revenues far more than its Indian counterpart. Hollywood's total revenues stood at $51 billion.
The cost of producing a Bollywood movie is far less, compared to Hollywood. An average Bollywood film is budgeted at $1.3 million whereas Hollywood movies cost an average $13.6 million.
India has a substantial domestic market for its films because of its huge population of 1.1 billion, four times the size of the population in the US.
International investors have begun to realise that production costs in India are a fraction of their domestic costs and that there is little difference in their production quality.
India's skilled engineering resources and low cost PC platforms allow a typical 22-minute episode of TV animation to be produced for $150,000 against $350,000 in the US.
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Regional movie Industries
In India films are produced in about 30 different languages. Hindi, Bengali, Assamese, Oriya, Marathi, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam are the most prominent amongst them.
After Bollywood, Hyderabad (Andhra Pradesh)-based Telugu industry is the second largest moviemaking unit in the country.
The Tamil movie industry, located in the Kodambakkam area of Chennai, the Tamil Nadu capital, is third in line in terms of number of movies produced in a year.
After that there is Malayalam film industry based in Kerala and Marathi film industry located in Pune.
Recently, the Kashmiri film industry, which had been lying dormant since the release of "Habba Khatoon" in 1967, was revived after a hiatus of 39 years with the release of "Akh Daleel Loolech" in 2006.
According to a report by the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), a total of 222 Hindi movies, 155 Telugu movies and 151 Tamil movies were certified in 2003.
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Studios and Production Houses
Film studios are flourishing in Mumbai and on its outskirts. A large number of film studios providing technicians, spot boys and extras operate from this metropolis.
Some of the big names in the field of film production include Yash Raj Films owned by Yash Chopra, Karan Johar's Dharma Productions, Subhash Ghai's Mukta Arts, Ronnie Screwvala's UTV Motion Pictures, Anil Dhirubhai Ambani's Adlabs and Sahara Entertainment.
However, Ramoji Film City in Hyderabad is amongst one of the world's largest film production studios with over 40 indoor sets, 200 outdoor sets and a workforce of nearly 7,500 people.
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