The OKC response to the increased Indian film offerings has been exciting, Jeffries said.
Bollywood movies in theaters now movie#
So, in addition to attracting Bollywood (fans) and Indian-American guests for it, we think that our art and independent movie lovers are definitely interested in experiencing those different cultures and genres.” That’s an important part of our company’s heritage and something that we really take a lot of pride in.
“We’ve always been really well-known for art, independent and foreign films. But we also know that the general consumer, they’re really looking for more diversity in film, from the central characters that are being shown in films all the way up to the filmmakers,” Reeves said in a phone interview. “Our research shows that Indian-Americans represent one of the fastest-growing ethnic groups in North America in general.
popularity of Indian cinema can be attributed not only to changing tastes among American moviegoers but also to the growing population of Americans with roots in India. “Because of the success of Bollywood films at the Cinemark Tinseltown theater, we are definitely getting more and more films to play for our guests.” The more successful a theater becomes playing these films, the more films that theater will get to play,” said Bryan Jeffries, vice president of marketing/promotions for Plano, Texas-based Cinemark, which operates OKC’s Tinseltown theater, in an email. Bollywood films are a little more selective in the number of theaters they play in. is a little different than a super-wide release of a traditional American film.
The release pattern of Bollywood films in the U.S. “We show the Bollywood films as often as we can get our hands on them. While told from a distinctly Western perspective, British director Danny Boyle’s eight-time Oscar winner “Slumdog Millionaire” in 2008 gave many American film audiences their first exposure to some of the signature traits of Bollywood films: lavish song-and-dance numbers, melodramatic turns of events for characters and a mix of action, comedy and romance called “masala.”īut Indian cinema is the world's largest film industry in terms of production, offering ample opportunities for American theaters to show work from the world’s second most populous country. India boasts several regional film industries, each producing movies in a different language, including Tamil, Telugu and Kannada. So, it’s definitely grown quite a bit over the past few years.”Īlthough the term often is misapplied to all Indian cinema, “Bollywood” refers to the Hindi-language film industry in the city of Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay, which is where the “B” comes from in “Bollywood”). And now you’re really seeing them exceeding $8 million, sometimes $10 million nationwide. “A few years ago, you’d see that a hugely successful North American release of a Bollywood film was bringing in $5 million. So, we want to make sure that we add that programming,” said Jessica Reeves, director of marketing for Scottsdale, Arizona-based Harkins Theatres, which operates OKC’s Bricktown movie house, along with theaters in Texas, Colorado, California and Arizona. They’ve just grown so rapidly over the past few years, and the demand wasn’t being met before. Just overall in general we’re finding that moviegoers are more interested than ever before in diversity in film, and definitely for Bollywood movies.
“We’re definitely seeing a demand for more Bollywood content in all of our markets, so we’re increasing the number of films shown. There was the musical drama “Gully Boy,” a coming-of-age tale about an aspiring street rapper from Mumbai the trilogy-capping “Total Dhamaal,” a star-studded adventure-comedy that has fared better with moviegoers than with film critics and the Kannada-language “Yajamana,” an action vehicle for Darshan, one of India’s movie stars big enough to go by first name only.īollywood is doing booming business in North America these days, and the regularity of local listings like these shows that Oklahoma City cineplexes are partaking in a national trend of showcasing more films imported from India. Among the show times for the latest Marvel Studios superhero saga, Tyler Perry’s last Madea movie and the third animated “How to Train Your Dragon” adventure, some Oklahoma City theaters listed less-than-mainstream titles on a recent Friday.
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