Hollywood is no longer the only box office draw

The success of the Bollywood film Baahubali 2 shows that American movies have competition, writes Shelina Janmohamed.

The fan base of Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan dwarfs that of most Hollywood actors. But would the average American movie-goer recognise him? Danish Siddiqui / Reuters
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The success of the Bollywood film Baahubali 2 shows that American movies have competition

The first ever film I saw at the cinema was The Jungle Book. I was four. I loved it so much, my mother even bought me the cassette tape of the soundtrack. I remember singing along to the King of the Swingers who said to Mowgli, “I want to be like you”.

Hollywood casts its magic over us from a young age. It is probably America’s most popular – as well as powerful – export, crossing friendly and hostile borders equally, implanting the American world view and how everyone else fits into it. It is soft power at its most seductive.

With such a mass of content, and the embedded view of the primacy of the American experience, there has been a minimisation of other cultures and artistic expression at a global level. This is partly due to a lack of investment but also in a lack of belief that non-American stories can extend past local appeal and attract global audiences.

This extends even into the inclusion of non-“American” stories and characters into the American cultural export. Just think of the limited number of roles in film given to black, Muslim or other “minority” characters. The few that are cast are limited to stereotypes: thugs, villains, terrorists. And even the idea that they are “minorities” is rooted in a view that white America is the normal world.

Except if you are reading this, you should be screaming out, “What about Bollywood?” Bollywood’s reach extends well beyond the borders of the subcontinent. Yet its superstars – many of them bigger than Hollywood’s A-listers in terms of fan followings – are shockingly unknown. Take Shah Rukh Khan, with his 80 Bollywood films, the closest thing India has to royalty and his 24 million Twitter followers. So unknown is he, that he’s been pulled over for questioning at US airports on three separate occasions. You can’t imagine that happening to Tom Cruise.

To this backdrop of long cultural hegemony, the launch of the recent Indian film Baahubali 2 is a high profile marker of a seminal shift that is occurring in content production. The CGI epic is the highest grossing Indian-box office film of all time ($120million in the first week) and it hit the US box office top ten in the week of its release. It’s not even made in Bollywood, it’s made in Hyderabad in Telegu, with a Hindi version too. It’s entire budget? $37 million (Dh135m).

The lessons are telling. The global audience, which has money in its pockets to spend on film, no longer expects its heroes to be white American male mavericks or to be made in Hollywood. Even more imminent is that long-overdue discussions in the US film industry about diversity – such as those at the Oscars – will soon be redundant as other global film centres accelerate.

Cultural export is usually well received from those who are seen as powerful or having something important to say in the world. And Baahubali’s success I believe is in no part unrelated to India’s growing stature. I believe we will also see more from China.

Hand-in-hand with this we will see more content developed by and aimed at Muslim audiences, but which hold universal appeal. A global population of 1.6 billion with annual consumer spending of around $2 trillion is hungry for film and television content that tells their stories, reflects their characters and can give a fresh point of view inspired by Muslim culture but based on shared universal values.

Take the development of Turkish soap operas, which shifted Muslim audience expectations towards higher quality drama that could entertain as well as connect.

Yet investors and filmmakers have been slow to realise the commercial potential of this audience, failing to notice that Muslim audiences are young and love film, TV and content. And if the current studios and content producers won’t invest in their stories, they will find the investment and create centres of innovation and talent for themselves.

Unlike the King of the Swingers, they don’t want to be like you, Hollywood. They want to be nobody but themselves. They are poised to tell the stories on their own terms.

Shelina Zahra Janmohamed is the author of the books Generation M: Young Muslims Changing the World and Love in a Headscarf