China, India to start new collaboration on film projects
- By Zhang Rui
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E-mail China.org.cn, April 20, 2019
According to "Indywood: The Indian Film Industry" report released by Deloitte, the Indian film industry is the largest in the world in terms of the sheer number of films produced. This number ranges between 1,500 to 2,000 and also spans some 20 languages. In terms of revenue, the industry has a gross box office revenue of $2.1 billion, which is expected to grow at an 11% Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR). It is projected to reach $3.7 billion by 2020. Riding on this growth, Indian film studios will also have to start looking at international markets to increase their revenue.
The relevant departments of the Chinese government decided to push forward on the cooperation between two countries in 2015. Chinese and Indian film cooperation has since then entered a new stage alongside the rapid development of the Chinese film industry.
In the past few years, Aamir Khan's "Dangal" opened the doors to the Chinese film market. It had a box office income of 1.29 billion yuan (US$193.78 million) in China, the second largest film market in the world. "Dangal" is so far still the highest grossing Indian film in China, but other critically acclaimed films such as "Secret Superstar" and "Bajrangi Bhaijaan" followed shortly after and became successes in China too. In addition, there were other successful Chinese-Indian co-productions too, such as Jackie Chan's "Kung Fu Yoga."
These films not only achieved unprecedented success in China, but also changed Chinese audience's stereotypes of Indian films. This new generation of films came with diverse themes, and gave Chinese audiences a new understanding of Indian films. At the same time, Chinese films have also made great progress in terms of their quality of production, and China has also become a huge market for Indian movies.
Sino-Indian cooperation could reshape the landscape of the world’s film industry, and this was one of the highlights of the 9th Beijing International Film Festival. This also addresses the issue of the continuous development of China's economy and the deepening of the Belt and Road Initiative.
