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Hollywood Goes Desi! - Legally

By: Karthik :+: Under: Entertainment, It Happens Only in India
On: ⋅ December 1, 2006 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment
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Dubbing soap operas and a one off hollywood movie has been common place in India for a long time now. I remember catching a few episodes of Junoon, dubbed as Pidivatham in tamil back in the day (it was strictly for entertainment).

Now I hear that the Hollywood execs are catching on.

The business of dubbing English films is a booming trade and big Hollywood studios like Paramount, Columbia Tristar, and Sony (SPE) are very active players in this emerging market.

Even films with their original titles intact have also done well like ‘Da Vinci Code’ (it grossed 41 lakhs in 1 week), ‘Spiderman-2′, ‘Superman Returns’, ‘King Kong’, ‘Anaconda’, ‘Omar Mukhtar’, ‘Mission Impossible 3′, ‘Sahara’, ‘Jungle Book 2, etc. .Jackie Chan is a huge draw with films like ‘Around The World In 80 Days’. But films like ‘Alexander’ and ‘Medallion’ have not done well. Paramount Films distribute the films of Universal and DreamWorks. India players like UTV Software, STAR Entertainment, and Innovision, have also entered the market.

Chalo mere bhai, Kuch viedshi ko pakadthey hain.

Movies have shaped societies. Lines and words from movies are used in everyday life and some concepts make people think. The Matrix is one of my personal favourites.

The thing that impresses me about this piece of news is that finally the Desi population will get to see and enjoy movies that have been appreciated by so many (as long as there are no lost in translation moments). Also, this will reduce the number of regional language movies that are straight remakes of english movies with a song and dance sequence. I have always hated the way the Indian movie industry can slaughter a good english movie.

I still am not sure if the public will ‘get’ the concept of movies like The Matrix, but it looks like a good start.

To ‘add fuel to the fire’ HBO India has decided to air three English movies dubbed in Hindi, something that Star Gold has been doing for a while.

The trend of English movies being dubbed in Hindi seems to be picking up with English movie channel - HBO - also following suit. For the first time, the channel will air three movies - The Mummy, The Mummy Returns and The Scorpion King - all dubbed in Hindi.

According to Ms Shruti Bajpai, Country Manager, HBO South Asia, “This is our way to say Thank You India.” The channel has been well received in India especially among the English language channels. While this is the first time with HBO, Ms Bajpai said that there would be no special block for such movies. Currently, Star Gold airs a number of dubbed films on its channel.

A related article on the Seoul times tells us why the television stations are doing this.

Three dubbed Hollywood movies made it to the top 20 during the first seven months of this year. Star Gold and Sony’s Max are a barometer of Hollywood appeal. For example, “The Mummy” has piped Shah Rukh Khan starrer “Main Hoon Na” to grab the top slot on Gold with a television viewership rating of 4.25, while “Spider-Man” is the biggest grosser on MAX with a rating of 3.81.

“Dubbed films work on television because the viewer gets the best of both worlds,” says Ajay Vidyasagar, vice-president (content and communication), Star TV, which started the trend about two years ago with dubbed Hollywood cinema on Star Gold (Hindi) and Vijay (Tamil). “These are big-ticket productions and we are offering them to viewers in the language they understand best,” he adds.

I am sure that dubbed movies will not affect Bollywood figures, unless the Desi population figures out that most Bollywood movies are sub-par.

Update: Sony Max has a microsite up since June 2004 dedicated to screening dubbed Hollywood movies.

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