Bollywood struck gold in 2011, revving up a lacklustre box-office with some help from its leading men, wooing audiences back to cinemas after a dismal run last year.
Domestic revenues touched 19.25 billion rupees this year, up from 14.5 billion rupees in 2010, and saw an unprecedented four films cross the billion rupee milestone. This was in sharp contrast to 2010, when the industry hardly saw any hits and only films like 'Dabangg' and 'Golmaal 3' in the second half brought some cheer to producers.
In 2011, four films, two of which starred Salman Khan, made more than a billion rupees in domestic theatrical revenues.
"Audiences and filmmakers have gone back and discovered stories that are close to our Indian roots," says Sanjeev Lamba of Reliance Big Pictures, which produced two of the year's biggest blockbusters -- "Bodyguard" and "Singham".
"Bodyguard", starring Salman Khan, was the most successful Bollywood film with more than 1.5 billion rupees in domestic theatrical revenues. Ajay Devgn starred in "Singham".
Both films were hero-oriented films, a hark back to the 80s and early 90s in Bollywood when films were centred on the hero, his defeat of the villain in a battle of good versus evil.
"Audiences have always loved the dilemmas of the hero, a little bit of action, some drama and some romance," Lamba said. "We had a lot of that this year."
But that didn't mean other themes weren't successful too. Offbeat films like "The Dirty Picture" and "Delhi Belly" proved to be sleeper hits, taking industry analysts by surprise but proving audiences had the stomach for both mass and niche films.
"It is not that more people are watching movies, but that the same audience is watching more movies. For instance, in the month of July, people would have seen a film like Delhi Belly and Singham," says Shailesh Kapoor of Ormax Media.
But big-ticket movies like "Ra.One" were a let-down. In spite of a publicity blitzkrieg, the Shah Rukh Khan film didn't live up to expectations, making around 1.2 billion rupees in net box-office collections, just a bit more than its official budget of a billion rupees, although industry estimates put the film's cost at over 1.5 billion rupees.
"Ra.One" is an exception, given its sci-fi theme, but for the most part, Bollywood managed to keep its purse strings in check. Production houses learnt budgeting a film right is half the battle won. Small budgets helped most films produced by Balaji make money.
"They have made 'The Dirty Picture' at a budget of less than 30 crore (300 million rupees) but have chosen themes and subjects which are interesting and publicised their films so well that audiences have felt compelled to watch them," says trade analyst Vajir Singh.
Big studios like Reliance and UTV have also changed their models, preferring to co-produce films rather than acquire them after completion. Last year, Reliance suffered losses after two big-ticket acquisitions, Mani Ratnam's "Raavan" and Hrithik Roshan-starrer "Kites" floundered at the box-office.
"This year, all our films have been co-productions or our own productions and we have seen the successes," Lamba said. "We prefer to be creatively involved from the beginning of the project rather than coming in at the end in an acquisition scenario."
Indian audiences also warmed up to Hollywood blockbusters in 2011, be it Harry Potter or Tintin.
"These days, the box-office collections of good Hollywood film can rival those of a Bollywood film," says Sunil Punjabi, CEO of the Cinemax change of multiplexes.
"The Adventures of Tintin - The Secret of the Unicorn", which released along with Ranbir Kapoor's "Rockstar" in November, made more than 70 million rupees in its opening weekend.
But Tom Cruise might prove a bigger draw at the box-office. The fourth film in his "Mission Impossible" series opened in Indian cinemas on Friday while Farhan Akhtar's highly anticipated "Don" sequel will woo Bollywood audiences this coming weekend.
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