Bollywood at the UK Box Office

Since the explosion of multiplexes and their visionary approach to Bollywood cinema, the box office returns are reflecting audience numbers of the late ‘70’s, well almost!

In a recent article in Sight & Sound, the indications are that there is a growing success of Bollywood films at the UK box office. The article also notes that although Bollywood cinema has reached great heights, the cinema itself have failed to cross over.

Below is an extract from the article by Charles Grant which you can read in full in the October 2007 edition of Sight & Sound.

“Typically debuting on around 40 screens and posting opening weekend figures in the region of “240,000, Indian movies routinely pop up in the UK box-office to ten with screen averages that are the envy of non-Bollywood distributors. Already this year, ‘Salaam-E-Ishq’, ‘Partner’, ‘Namastey London’, ‘Ta Ra Rum Pum’ and ‘Jhoom Barabar Jhoom’ have all achieved final grosses in the £700,000 to £90,000 range. This puts them below 2007’s biggest foreign-language hits ‘The Lives of Others’, ‘La Vie en rose’, ‘Curse of the Golden Flower’ and ‘Tell No One’, but above recent titles such as ‘The Science of Sleep’.

David Hancock from Screen Digest report highlights the top-grossing Indian cinema at the UK box office with titles such as Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham in 2001 at £2,498.281 to Dil to Pagal Hai in 1997 coming in at £990,000.