Hollywood set a 'Marvelous' tone for 2020 after pocketing over Rs 1,000 crore last year

More and more Indians are warming up to Hollywood films, setting the cash registers alive for these movies.

According to film and trade business analyst, Girish Johar, Hollywood scored in the range of Rs 1,000 crore to Rs 1,200 crore, in 2019.

In 2018, the total revenue for the top 10 Hollywood films released in India was Rs 750 crore. Hollywood’s contribution in 2017, was Rs 480 crore.

“Hollywood, about a decade ago, started at two percent (contribution at Indian box office) but now it is slowly catching up with the 15- 20 percent range of the national cumulative box office. They are steadily gaining foothold at the Indian box office,” Johar told Moneycontrol.

The interesting trend last year was that Hollywood’s growth in India was not powered by superheroes alone. And validating this is the success of films like The Lion King, Joker.

“The Lion King was the game changer for me because it was an animated film and Avengers still has a huge fan following whereas The Lion King had no faces (was not a star-led film) and the film crossed more than Rs 150 crore (in India).

Another surprising success was the sleeper hit Joker. “Joker released only in English language and is an adult film and it still did over Rs 60 crore net at the box office. This clearly shows that audiences have matured in India,” he added.

Avengers Endgame, The Lion King, Captain Marvel and Joker these four films have definitely changed the landscape of Hollywood in India, he said further.

Nonetheless, Avengers Endgame’s contributions in terms of revenue was the most significant.

On BookMyShow, the film is listed as the top movie on the basis of number of tickets sold. The fourth installment in the Avengers series sold over 8.6 million tickets and became the highest-selling Hollywood movie on the platform.

Another data points out that about 50 percent of tickets sold for Avengers: Endgame, were for Hindi, Tamil and Telugu on Paytm and at the peak of bookings, the film saw 1,400 tickets sold per minute.

Experts say that the wider acceptance of Hollywood films over the years can be attributed to the localization strategy with films getting dubbed in local languages, including Hindi, Tamil and Telugu, in a bid to reach a wider audience.

However, Hollywood still remains concentrated in the major cities.

“For Avengers it is beyond metro cities but there is a major problem in terms of going more internal or 3,000-5,000 screen mark. This is because Hollywood films release on 2K DCI (Digital Cinema Initiative) complaint cinemas and Indian cinema (theatres) in the interiors, there are less to no 2K DCI complaint cinemas. That is why the penetration is not as wide. So, they concentrate only on top 20 cities for Hollywood,” he pointed out.

The term 2K in digital cinema is described as images that have a digital film resolution of approximately 2,048 pixels which is the minimum required specification to screen new theatrical content from Hollywood.

While there is no Avengers to bring in the lion’s share at the box office this year, there are two films coming from the Marvel cinematic Universe (MCU) that will keep the spirits of all Marvel fans high.

One of the forefront players in the Avengers franchise, Black Widow will see a standalone release in May this year. In addition, Eternals from Marvel Studios will hit theatres in November.

Other tent pole Hollywood ventures to watch out for this year include No Time to Die from the James Bond world, Fast & Furious 9 which may have Eid release and clash with Akshay Kumar’s Laxmmi Bomb.