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| Dubbed English films set the box office ringing |
| Divya Subramaniam / Mumbai Mar 08, 2009, 00:38 IST |
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Oscar winning Slumdog Millionaire saw its box-office collection go up by 50 per cent because it was dubbed in Hindi, according to Vijay Singh, CEO of Fox Star India.
Fox, which distributed the movie, said that in some cities, it released just the Hindi version, with amazing success. “A successful Hollywood film usually makes one-third of a successful Bollywood film. So, 50 per cent increase in revenue is very significant,” says Singh. In fact, according to Fox Star India, of the total box-office collections (in India) from Slumdog Millionaire and Slumdog Crorepati, nearly two-thirds came from the Hindi version.
Dubbed versions of English movies are catching the fancy of cinema buffs not only in tier-2 and tier-3 cities like Indore, Vizag, Vadodara, Kolhapur and Jaipur but also in areas on the outskirts of large metros like Delhi and Mumbai which have a large non-English-speaking population.
The dubbed versions already account for around 5 per cent of the total box-office collections of movies in India, say industry experts.
Percept Picture Company has been among the early entrants. It tasted blood in 2007 when it released Spiderman-2 in Hindi. Navin Shah, CEO of Percept Picture Company, says, “The Hindi version of Spiderman 2 that was released in 2007 was so popular that it actually threatened the business of Bollywood films that were released at the time, something that is unprecedented. Usually, the biggest challenge for these films is the sheer number of Indian films that are released at a time,” says Shah.
Multiplex owners agree that English films dubbed in other Indian languages are attracting movie-goers. Says Alok Tandon, chief operating officer (COO) of Inox Leisure Ltd, which runs a multiplex chain: “In 2008, we released close to 10 dubbed films, up from the seven in 2007.
These are English films dubbed into Hindi, Tamil, Telugu & other Indian languages. Over the past couple of years, with penetration of multiplexes into smaller towns, dubbed English films have proved to be very popular.”
Film experts say what makes these versions attractive is the cost of dubbing compared with the returns. The cost of dubbing a film can start from Rs 5-6 lakh and keep increasing depending on the quality of the dubbing as well as the reputation of the dubbing artistes.
According to Manish Mathur, COO of P9 Integrated, an entertainment and marketing company: “The English film also has to be marketed by the distributors, so the hype is already there. The dubbed version offers additional footfalls.”
Almost 90 per cent films that are dubbed do well, but not all films are dubbed. “Only those films that have a good visual appeal manage to attract crowds. For example, a dubbed version of Spiderman or Harry Potter might do well but not a film like Sex and the City,” says Mathur.
Others say that not all films can be dubbed in regional languages. Only films of a certain genre work. Says Kercy Daruwalla, managing director of Sony Pictures Entertainment: “We find that mostly action films and films that appeal to kids tends to do well in this segment. So we are very careful while selecting the movies to be dubbed.”
Once a movie is dubbed, it is like a separate product. Sony Pictures Entertainment has a studio as well as a dedicated team to oversee the dubbing and branding of the film. Hindi is the most popular language that the films are dubbed in, followed by Tamil and Telugu. Spiderman 2 was dubbed even in Bhojpuri, an experiment that proved to be a great success. The Bhojpuri Spiderman-2 collected Rs 80-90 lakh from just six prints.
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