Tuesday
Oct212008
Tuesday, October 21, 2008 at 12:06PM Trailer - Disney's Bollywood Debut, 'Roadside Romeo'
This Friday is a big day for Disney: It marks the
opening of the studio's first animated Bollywood production,
Roadside Romeo. 
What are your thoughts on this? Not so much the movie
trailer, but the move to go global in a different way, creating new products
that fit other cultures better than Lilo & Stich? Will we see this
happen more and more often with other studios?
And in recent weeks, Disney has further acknowledged the huge global impact of the Indian box office, and has begun production on four live-action films under its Walt Disney Pictures India shingle, two of which are ramping up production, and two more that are currently in development.
Here's the English-language trailer for Roadside Romeo, which features the voices of Bollywood stars Saif Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor:
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Reader Comments (4)
As I mentioned yesterday, I'd rather see Disney shore up the home-front before attempting to mine the Asian market with products designed specifically for them. They haven't had a bona-fide hit that was not attached to Pixar in over a decade. And now they seem to be using that business model in India...
Still, it makes a lot of sense to do what they are doing. Markets like China and India are large ones, but culturally, they are not as keyed in to our Western values as the Western world is. Exporting the latest Ashton Kutcher movie will generate business, to be sure, but a movie designed from the ground up for the people it is being screened for would generate even more, right?
If I lived in India and was making a good living, I suppose I would want to watch movies about the Indian Las Vegas starring the Indian Ashton Kutcher and the Indian Cameron Diaz...
Ah hell, I don't even want to watch What Happens in Vegas.
But here's my point: In 2007 the top five grossing movies in India (population; 1 billion souls) were all made in India. Hollywood films play about as well there as French films do here in the states (though oddly, they seemed to love Rocky 3).
The middle class is huge in India and they have expendable incomes that they are spending at the movies every year. They aren't spending it on our products and that makes Hollywood mad...
Maybe Roadside Romeo will change that. All I know, is that if I went to a Warren Miller convention, I wouldn't want to watch a movie about sewing, and in a way, that's what Hollywood has been feeding the world for decades.
I don't think Hollywood is going to succeed in exporting film made specifically for the Indian market to the West. I believe there is little resonance in Indian popular culture among the western audience. Unless a formula can be found to create film that can appeal to both markets. Why do you think Bollywood films are not more popular than they are now in the west? And vice versa?
For China the situation is very different. Foreign films are immensely popular because they fulfill the local's fantasy of what it is like to live outside of China. (They do believe our lifestyle in the west is like the movies.) Unfortunately this huge audience exist only in the black market. Hollywood barely makes money in China and it's been a thorn in the U.S. China trade relation for a long time.
As for making films in China, only the Hollywood style productions and those targeted specifically to the west are financial successes. Even then not all of them are. The Chinese art films never did make it to the big time movie market in the West.
I really don't see how Disney can create a business model for making Asian centric films to target the Western movie market.
They're not making these films for American audiences; they're trying to tap into the Asian markets with products designed for them.
Best movie ever seen is "Roadside romeo" 10stars