The Big Picture: Bollywood in 2022

As 2022 draws to a close the Hindi film industry has suffered yet another colossal setback. Bollywood’s most prolific and consistently successful director, Rohit Shetty, has delivered a dead-on-arrival Cirkus. Expectations had been riding high on the major release despite its tepid advance booking as against the uncontainable wave of success of James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water. Afterall Cirkus had the magical sensibility of Shetty behind it, the one who is supposed to know the pulse of the Indian mass audience like no other. However, the loud, inane and annoying adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors (rather Gulzar’s Angoor) grossed paltry sums of Rs 6.25 crore and Rs 6.40 crore (according to film trade site, Bollywood Hungama) in the first two days of the festive weekend when the footfalls in theatres and ticket sales are supposed to surge. Unless some MBappe like turnaround happens in this game, it’s looking like a certain loss than a possible win for Cirkus, ringing in gloom and despair than hope and cheer for an already beleaguered Bollywood as it enters 2023.

Back in September, just before the release of Ayan Mukerji’s big ticket fantasy Brahmastra: Part One—Shiva, filmmaker Anurag Kashyap told me how much he wanted it to strike the elusive gold at box office. “I prayed for its success even in my dreams,” he said, even though his own brand of realistic, gritty, mid-budget cinema is far removed from the eye-popping stunts, song and dance, and spectacle of Brahmastra. “One successful tentpole film brings confidence and sets the money in circulation within the industry for all kinds of movies to get made, including my own. A filmmaker like me won’t be able to exist if big films don’t work,” he said. 

One of the most expensive and ambitious Indian films, that tried to marry Indian mythology with Marvel’s metaverse, Brahmastra did bring in a much-needed relief to Bollywood, raking in enough (Rs 306 crore gross as per Mumbai-based media consulting firm Ormax Media’s October box office report) to be able to announce the second part of the trilogy.

However, that was an exception than a rule in 2022 that had mostly been about much-touted films, riding on big stars and bigger budgets, failing to bring audiences to the theatres. As a result, there was a tight check on free-flowing cash and apprehensions about investment in newer productions. Upcoming projects got reviewed, revised, nipped in the bud, stalled, axed, budgets slashed, so much so that even release dates of films got shuffled around because of the fear and anxiety of rejection from the audience. In a nutshell, a lot of work slowed down through 2022. “There’s been a state of panic and confusion in Bollywood,” said film exhibitor and distributor Akshaye Rathi. Screenwriter Atika Chohan, underlining the uncertainty surrounding the films in the pipeline, said: “There is a sense of foreboding, of recession setting in. It’s ominous, scary even for someone like me who has functioned on the fringes … Things have taken a melancholic turn in the last few months. We are clinging on to the projects, being watchful of the work.” 

This steep fall in Bollywood’s fortunes came after a historic high in 2019 when the gross box office receipts in India (for films across all languages, including Hollywood) had broken Rs 10,000 crore mark, according to Ormax Media. Hindi films led this success march with a whopping 44% share of gross domestic box office, Hollywood (in all dubbed language versions) stood second with 15%, followed by Tamil and Telugu films, at 13% each. Footfalls in cinema halls also crossed an important threshold of 100 crore, reaching 103 crore in 2019, up from 2018’s 94.5 crore. Hindi cinema contributed 33% to domestic footfalls with Tamil at 19%, Telugu 18% and Hollywood 9%.

This growth story for Bollywood has come undone in the wake of the changing dynamics during and after COVID making it is go through one of its worst phases in history.

Barely five Hindi films, apart from Brahmastra of about 80-odd released in the theatres, fared well this year. It included The Kashmir Files, Drishyam 2, Gangubai Kathiawadi and Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2 with Jugjugg Jeeyo touted as a decent earner. The parade of flops, on the other hand, has been endless. “These have been the odd ones out amid below par performers. The lean patch has been continuing,” said Shailesh Kapoor, founder and CEO, Ormax Media. 

Cirkus caps Bollywood’s festival-time disasters. Heropanti 2 came a cropper during Eid. Raksha Bandhan in August sent the industry in mourning with two major releases sinking without a trace—Laal Singh Chaddha and Rakshabandhan. Ram Setu and Thank God ushered in a black Diwali. Between May and July, one of the biggest, old-time Bollywood studio Yash Raj Films, delivered three back-to-back duds—Jayeshbhai Jordaar, Samrat Prithviraj and Shamshera. As compared to Vikas Bahl’s Goodbye, starring Amitabh Bachchan, there was much more excitement for “Back To The Beginning,” a four-day festival of 11 of Bachchan’s most iconic films across 17 cities, to mark his 80th birthday in October.

Movie watching culture in India has been driven by the top stars, that too male, with their loyal fans queuing up in a show of strength on the ‘first day, first show’ of their idol’s new venture. So, in the pre-pandemic reality, a bulk of films’ business would happen on the first weekend of the release. The ‘opening,’ as it is called in the trade parlance in Bollywood, would make or break a film. However, now despite aggressive promotions and presence of the most beloved stars, the theatres are running empty on the first few days of the release. “Openings of most big stars have dropped to 40-60% of their pre-pandemic openings, indicating that star power is diminishing,” said Kapoor. Akshay Kumar got the distinction of delivering five duds in a row this year—Bachchhan Paandey, Rakshabandhan, Samrat Prithviraj, Cuttputlli and Ram Setu. Cirkus marks the third consecutive flop for Ranveer Singh after 83 and Jayeshbhai. Vikram Vedha, could not fare well, notwithstanding the combined might of superstars Hrithik Roshan and Saif Ali Khan as the protagonists and despite being the remake of a Tamil blockbuster. And Aamir Khan decided to go on a year-long sabbatical in the wake of Lal Singh Chaddha flopping.

One of the world’s most influential industries, when it comes to production, ticket sales and revenues, Bollywood has also had to face the tough challenge thrown by the South cinema at home. 37% of Hindi box office in 2022 were generated through Hindi dubbed versions of Telugu, Tamil and Kannada language films, as per October box office report of Ormax Media. It was all about the sway of the multilingual films that acquired a new, much respected nomenclature—pan-India films. The biggest hit in 2022 has been Kannada film KGF: Chapter 2 amassing an eye popping Rs 970 crore in domestic box office in all the versions (figures as per Ormax October box office report), followed by Telugu RRR at Rs 869 crore, Kannada Kantara with Rs 346 crore and Tamil Ponniyin Selvan: PS I with Rs 323 crore. Hindi cinema manages to enter way down at the fifth spot with Brahmastra.

However, this is something that has not come about overnight but is the culmination of the shift in power taking shape over the last five years in the Indian film industry. Hindi cinema might have behaved like the Big Brother with a bigger share of the overall pie, but it was unable to make a dent in the domination of other language cinemas in their own strongholds. Things began turning with the release of Telugu language Baahubali in 2015. Its Hindi version took the audience in North India by storm, challenging Bollywood as a leader in its own home turf. Its sequel in 2017 sealed things further with the Hindi version emerging bigger than any other Hindi language film that year. 

There have been challenges from the other side as well. Hollywood has often been critiqued as the monolith that has been destroying local cinema cultures and homogenising entertainment globally. Bollywood had for long been able to withstand this takeover. However, since the astounding business of “Avengers Endgame” in 2019 (Rs 433 crore in all the language versions) it has been gaining ground as well. In 2022 Top Gun Maverick, Dr Strange in Multiverse of Madness and The Batman fared better than a lot of big Hindi releases. Avatar: The Way of the Water had raked in Rs 129 crore since its release mid-December (as per trade website Bollywood Hungama) to possibly become bigger than some of the Bollywood hits.

To be fair it’s not the first time that Bollywood has been crisis-hit. In recent times, it had faced a slump in 2002, the year when nothing seemed to work except three films – Devdas, Raaz and Kaante. But never have the odds felt so irredeemably against it with the industry under siege and losing confidence. No upcoming film is sparking interest and excitement, not just for the audience but the industry insiders as well. 

According to a report by Ormax Media’s Gautam Jain, while only a handful of Hindi films delivered at the box office in 2022, the situation had not been very different for films in Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada or Telugu. “In fact, the Telugu film industry had to halt production for a few weeks to go back to the drawing board, taking cognisance of the under-performance,” he writes.

There have been some obvious practical constraints for films not doing well. Going out to watch a film as a family is not financially viable anymore. “Middle class does not have the money to splurge on expensive multiplex tickets, popcorn and cold drinks. Where is the spending power?” asked Kashyap, factoring in economic downturn, inflation, slide in income and rising unemployment in the country, especially in the wake of COVID. 

National Cinema Day, observed in India in September when film tickets were sold across the country for Rs 75 (less than a dollar), did meet with success. However, it seemed like a one-off event, not financially viable for theatres on a regular basis.

The tale of woes hardly ends at theatrical returns tanking. Lucrative deals through premieres on streaming platforms that helped producers make partial recovery during the pandemic also crashed with films not getting sold as easily. With the shorter gap (of four weeks) between the theatrical and streaming releases, there had been an assumption in the audience that they’d be able to see any film at home in a month’s time so why venture out for it. That has been increased to eight weeks to give theatrical run a fair chance. So, Laal Singh Chaddha dropped on Netflix in early October, but its makers, banking on big theatrical returns (which was not to be), were hoping for a window of six months or so between the two.

In the two years of the pandemic, with nowhere to go, the middle class, theatre-going audience in India has become a stay-at-home consumer, discovering streaming platforms and the wealth of content online, not just from within India but overseas as well. Korean dramas, popularly known as K-dramas, have found a ready audience in those who have grown up on Indian melodramas and romances but aren’t able to find the magic anymore. Malayalam language films from the South Indian state of Kerala have been satiating the cinephiles with their out-of-the-box ideas and interesting engagement with issues of the day; by not just picking great stories but also telling them well. Viewers of Bollywood have become exposed to better content, are spoilt for choice and hence more demanding.

According to columnist, author and MD and CEO of Future Brands, Santosh Desai, there has been a disruption in Hindi cinema’s connection with the middle class and family audiences. Also with liberalisation, globalisation, a steady marginalisation of the single screen theatres and growth in the number of multiplexes have ensured that an urban sensibility has begun reflect in the stories, characters and settings of the films. Bollywood began thriving in its own bubble and lost touch with reality and the masses. It was creating fantasies about impossibly beautiful people living in picturesque locales; their only problem in life being whether to eat the cake and have it too. The small towns and villages took a backseat, as did the villagers and the farmers. It could also well be this absence of relatability that has had the audience deserting it, unable to see anything of consequence for themselves in the films but finding that in the earthy, rooted films from the South instead.

Now the Hindi film audience largely comprises young men and the cinema they appear to patronise is masculine and testosterone-driven to boot. “A Jayeshbhai feels a meek misfit in the aggressive male RRR, Pushpa, KGF universe that has been dominating now,” said Amul V Mohan, a Mumbai-based producer and trade expert. However well-meaning the film might be, a mild-mannered hero who questions patriarchy (in the case of Jayeshbhai, female infanticide) is suddenly an anomaly in the predominant, hyper-macho blueprint of success these days in which women are either entirely absent or incidental. What’s more, the unbridled masculinity and machismo in contemporary Bollywood has also been drawing significantly from the predominant patriotic fervour and aggressive Hindu religious iconography and sensibility, be it a Brahmastra, Ram Setu, or the forthcoming Adipurush.

“The element of surprise has gone from Hindi cinema. The audience can itself write the script of most of the films it sees,” said TV producer, director and author Nasreen Munni Kabir. The lack of inspiration and imagination in filmmakers, sheer laziness and complacency, turning filmmaking into a profession rather than passion and falling back on the safety of all that has worked in the past could be the reasons films are looking and feeling jaded now.

A lot of good actors, directors and writers are moving to streaming platforms that are green lighting fresher content. However, filmmaker Dibakar Banerjee isn’t so gung-ho about it. According to him, it’s not about revival of meaningful content or freedom of expression but about survival, catching eyeballs, and creating addiction; in other words, the focus is on binge-watching. The fear of state-backed retribution and repression and censorship of content has been growing following the case of Amazon Prime’s original Tandav, an Indian political thriller web series that was released in 2019, where the makers were accused of hurting religious sentiments of the audience. Banerjee’s own Netflix original Tees is stuck in a limbo because of the platform’s worries about how it might be received in the current socio-political situation in India. 

The audience hostility is not just confined to rejecting Hindi films. Over the past three years the industry has also been pummelled in other ways. Just like the polarised Indian social fabric, the supposedly “secular” industry too has found itself getting split wide open ideologically. “Bollywood is being dismissed and denigrated by association by calling it names like as Dawoodwood (Dawood Ibrahim being the most wanted mafia don in Mumbai),” said an industry insider. 

Backlash and bans emerged as the other big bane in 2022. Timed with the Laal Singh Chaddha release, #BoycottAamir began to trend on Twitter which many feel may have contributed to the adverse business of the film. Now the first big film of 2023, Pathaan, that marks Shah Rukh Khan’s return to big screen after Zero in 2018, is facing music over a song in which an offensive saffron coloured bikini appears for less than 20 seconds. “The fringe has become slightly more mainstream. It has become easy to offend and get offended. Bollywood continues to be the easy target,” said an industry insider. All for being highly visible and just as vulnerable when it comes to the business interest and the millions riding on it. “The mob has gone beyond its leaders. It is on its own now and much more dangerous,” said writer-director filmmaker Vasan Bala.

“Boycott is not an isolated instance. It has been getting solidified in the past 2-3 years,” says an industry insider. Even the most minor things can offend which then gets magnified on Twitter through hashtag wars. Trending topics become fodder for stories in the media and trickle down to Facebook posts and Whatsapp forwards, which get amplified on the ground, building aversion for films.

According to Desai, the boycott calls, earlier assumed to not affect materially, are clearly going beyond Twitter and playing a larger role now. “Things are changing. Political dialogue is infecting the social and artistic sphere,” said Desai. Ironically, even Adipurush, based on the Ramayana, found itself at the receiving end of the fury for its alleged inaccurate portrayal of Hindu gods. Actor Saif Ali Khan was particularly targeted for his “Mughal era” inspired getup of “the staunch Hindu brahmin” Ravana, the chief antagonist of the Hindu epic.

The backlash against the industry has also been growing since the death by suicide case of young actor Sushant Singh Rajput in 2020 which was surrounded in rumours and speculation and was a subject of widespread and often unsubstantiated media coverage. From supposed preponderance of drugs to nepotism, Bollywood came at the receiving end for his mental health issues. A continual narrative has since been getting built around the supposed sleaziness and amorality in the industry. “There has been a systematic character assassination with the industry deliberately associated with drugs, alcohol, parties, vanity and sex,” said an industry insider.

“Earlier I might have been one in ten facing adversity, now all are,” says Banerjee. But he isn’t surprised by this turn of events. “Bollywood has been kowtowing to the political masters, it is beholden to the very forces it was once trying to seduce … It has been supine. We let it happen. We never stood up for anything. We have been sycophantic power grabbers,” he said. 

Many feel that the bubble had to burst one day and are hopeful that some changes and growth for the better might emerge from this slide. Experts are advocating a systemic rehaul and radical makeover that involves rationalizing budgets, reorienting the star system, focusing on content, selling it at a reasonable price to maximize returns and, also a correction in ticket pricing. “There will be a degree of trial and error but what Bollywood needs to do is put out a lot of content of all kinds and with varied marketing strategies,” said Rathi.

While Bollywood has become corporatised, professionalised and disciplined over the last decade or more, it still hasn’t accorded the rightful respect, primacy and passion to content. The scripts might be ready and bound before the shoot unlike the earlier days when they were put together on the set, however, scriptwriters, the backbone of filmmaking, need to be given their rightful place in the sun. There was a time back in the ’50s when studios had strong linkages with litterateurs and used to nurture young talent. That patronage is missing now in all but a handful of places. 

On the other hand, stars don't necessarily ensure hits despite accounting for 30-40% of a film's cost. “They have devalued themselves. They have lost the magic and the mystique by being desperate for attention on social media,” said Kabir. “The stars in the South don’t flaunt wealth, cars or fashion. They only live for their films. In Bollywood, stars have turned even coming out of the airport into content [uploaded on social media],” said Bala. Every bit of their life plays out on Instagram, and it has grown manifold in the past two years. What was initially seen as a way of staying in touch with the fans has led to an overkill. Why would there be any more excitement then to see them on the big screen when they are a push of the button away on our mobiles?

According to writer-lyricist Hussain Haidry, we might talk a lot about cinema being magic and collective hypnosis but can’t fool people all the time. “The old syntax of a blockbuster needs to change,” he said. A blockbuster does not necessarily have to be big budget, backed by a leading studio, headlined by stars, of a sweeping scale, trying to cater to every member of the audience with larger-than-life emotions and entertainment. It must be packaged anew. Even a small film on love across class and caste divides, with unknown actors, like Nagraj Manjule’s Marathi language Sairat, which came out of nowhere in 2016, made it big with the sheer freshness of its telling. 

It’s not that the industry lacks talent. Banerjee sees hope in filmmakers working away from the star system, telling surprising stories, often from the interiors of India and beyond their personal comfort zones. The indefatigable wouldn’t just give up the fight. “It’s easy to put the last nail on the coffin. Bollywood would have to just wait it out and ride the wave,” said Mohan. “It’s not about one push, one day, one scene, one dialogue. It’s a Leviathan we are up against,” said Chohan. One Brahmastra or Drishyam 2 might ring in hope for the days to come but shouldn’t make the industry fall right back on its old ways. It will have to change totally. Power will need to be redistributed. New voices will have to come up. As Chohan summed it up: “Bollywood will have to embrace a new normal.”