An Indian movie, Kites, has become the first ever Bollywood movie to break into the U.S. and Canada Top 10 films in the first week of release. It has grossed $1mn in the process. The movie was released with 2300 prints with 500 of the prints for the overseas market and 1800 for the Indian market. This is by far the largest ever release for a Bollywood movie.
Kites deviates from traditional Bollywood movies which are 80-90 percent in Hindi. This movie has Spanish, English and Hindi as the languages. Some people wondered about the Bollywoodness of Kites. Reliance BIG pictures which produced and marketed the movie might have had set its eyes on the international market when it was making the movie.
Kites saw good opening day collections in India too. It had the second best opening only next to 3 Idiots. It collected 30.5 crore rupees in the opening weekend. This is despite not having full screenings in some parts of India. After that Kites did not fly all that well. It saw a major drop in collections on Monday across India.
Kites doing well overseas and breaking into the U.S. top 10 is good news for Bollywood. But not so good news awaits in the hinterland of India. Bihar which is a big market for Bollywood movies is not happy with the potpourri of languages used in the film. Most importantly Hindi is hardly spoken. And this is their reaction:
Gopal Bhartiya confirmed the news and said, “I am in a state of shock. I am just back from Mumbai where I met the CEO of Big Pictures (co-producer) Kamal Gyanchandani and Rakesh Roshan. I clearly told them that what they did is not right. When most people in Bihar do not understand English, how are they supposed to understand Spanish? I will file a case against them. (source)
As they say “you can’t make everyone happy”. And the film makers knew very well knew what they were doing. They knew which audience they were pleasing. It is the English speaking Hindi audience in the overseas market and not the Hindi speaking Hindi audience of Bihar. In that case is it fair for them to release 1800 prints in India? Shouldn’t they be cutting their Indian prints especially in the non-metros? Should they be gambling with the distributors in Bihar?
