Resurgence of regional cinema
Indian regional cinema, once a step-child of big bucks, multi-starrer commercial Bollywood blockbusters, is lately witnessing a marked resurgence thanks to rising investments from both Indian and foreign studios.
There has been a gradual shift in favour of regional films vis-a-vis Hindi films, with the result that regional cinema has got a new window of opportunity to engage its audiences, says the latest Ernst & Young study — Spotlight on India’s Entertainment Economy: Seizing new growth opportunities.
With 60 per cent of all movies produced in India coming from the four South Indian languages—Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu–regional language cinema has become a much more cohesive and integral part of India’s film industry as also a money spinning proposition, that multiplexes are increasing their screenings of regional movies, finds the study.
The Indian film industry, with more than 1,000 films produced annually in more than 20 languages and 3.3 billion tickets sold resulting in the highest number of theatre admissions, derives almost 90 per cent of its revenue from non-English language movies. It is projected to grow from US $ 3.6 billion in 2011 to US $ 5 billion by 2014 registering a compounded annual growth rate of 14.1 per cent.
This growth, says the study, is expected to come from the expansion of multiplexes in small cities, investments from foreign studios in domestic and regional productions, the growing popularity of niche movies et al. The number of multiplex screens is expected to double in the next five years from 900 to 1,775 screens with a host of companies having lined up investments to spur multiplex penetration in smaller towns.
What is driving the resurgence of regional films, the study notes is that international film studios are now producing and distributing regional movies in a big way as also with a number of Indian film studios and media and entertainment companies expanding their international footprint by acquiring international theatre chains and production studios.
Likewise, film financing, traditionally dominated by informal sources, is migrating toward organised sources such as banks and film funds, including incentives, in-film branding and pre-sale bridge finance, besides rebates and grants all spurring regional film production activities.
The study elucidates that if global media companies look to spur regional cinema, they have to localise their content, be sensitive to local culture, repurpose it to suit local audiences, revisit price point a very sensitive issue in Indian market, and above all understand regional nuances by adopting different strategies for each region taking into consideration differences in demand.
