A brace of Salman Khan megahits couldn’t prevent the Bollywood box office in 2015 dropping for the first time in five years. Theatrical revenues fell by 6.7% to 2,568 crore (£257m) from 2014’s total of 2,754 crore, according to figures published by the Indian title Business Standard.
Khan provided 2015’s top two Hindi-launguage earners, the tearjerking Kashmir jaunt Bajrangi Bhaijaan (320 crore) and romantic drama Prem Ratan Dhan Payo (207 crore). The films helped halt a weak start to 2015 for Bollywood, which failed to produce a 100-crore film until the May comedy Tanu Weds Manu Returns.
Only six of the yearly top 10 made it over the 100-crore mark, against nine in 2014. Many of the year’s expected blockbusters failed to ignite, like gangster film Bombay Velvet, or display their expected longevity, such as the current Shah Rukh Khan vehicle Dilwale.
Increasingly sophisticated audiences gravitated instead towards lower-budget, more low-key offerings such as Piku, May’s road-trip comedy that paired old-school heartthrob Amitabh Bachchan with newer stars Deepika Padukone and Irrfan Khan (Life of Pi).
“In 2015, content won hands-down,” Ajit Andhare, chief operating officer of Viacom18 Motion Pictures, told Business Standard. “More importantly, movies that were packaged well and projected as a ‘must-watch’, but failed to deliver the content to match this proposition, were rejected by audiences.”
It’s a stumble for the Indian film industry, which has been growing consistently since a slump at the end of the last decade. Total Indian box office – comprising Bollywood’s taking, plus those of the country’s regional film industries and foreign films – had increased to $1.7bn (£1.2bn) in 2014.
If Bollywood has had a fitful 2015, the competition may end up taking the strain. The first part of the Telugu-language war epic Baahubali, India’s most expensive homegrown production ever, was the overall Indian box-office champion, with an estimated 500-crore gross.
Meanwhile, Hollywood had a strong year in the country most culturally indifferent to foreign cinema except for perhaps the US. Furious 7, Jurassic World and Avengers: Age of Ultron all broke the 100-crore mark, the first time more than one Hollywood blockbuster has managed the feat in a single year.
The US market share in India for the year is expected to be around 15%; more typically, it is 6% to 7%. The efforts of Hollywood’s local-language divisions – responsible this year for superhero film Mr X and Brothers, a remake of Tom Hardy’s mixed martial arts film Warrior, among others – also continue to blur the line between it and Bollywood.
Worth $1.7bn, India is the world’s joint-fifth largest film market, alongside the UK. It may not boast the explosive 48% growth rate of the much-vaunted Chinese market, but it is by far the biggest territory in terms of annual admissions (9.1bn in 2013) and films produced (more than 1,000).
Top 10 Bollywood box office, 2015
1. Bajrangi Bhaijaan, 320 crore
2. Prem Ratan Dhan Payo, 207
3. Bajirao Mastani, 161
4. Tanu Weds Manu Returns, 152
5. Dilwale, 144
6. ABCD 2, 106
7. Welcome Back, 97
8. Baby, 96
9. Singh Is Bliing, 90
10. Gabbar Is Back, 86
