Mumbai: Indian cinema and entertainment has been gradually gaining a share in the global market, with audiences around the world being more receptive to Indian content now than they have been in the past. Spurred, no doubt, in part due to the increased accessibility of the content on online streaming platforms. Despite this, India is yet to score a global hit like Parasite or Squid Game, with a worldwide impact and appeal. How can Indian content woo global audiences better, transcending boundaries and barriers to tell stories that connect with audiences worldwide? Are global co-productions the way forward?
At the sixth edition of Indiantelevision.com’s The Content Hub Summit 2022 held at Mumbai’s JW Marriott on Wednesday, industry stakeholders explore these questions, while sharing their views and insights on how Indian content can play a bigger role in the global cinema & entertainment landscape. The session, “Made in India, For the World” was moderated by film critic, journalist and author Mayank Shekhar and comprised of Friday Filmworks chief executive officer Devendra Deshpande, The Foundry creator-in-chief Vekeana Dhillon, International Media Acq Corp chairman & CEO Shibasish Sarkar, Indian Film Producer Sunir Kheterpal as panelists.
The summit was presented by Viacom18, and co-powered by Applause Entertainment and IN10 Media Network. Aaj Tak Connected Stream is the association partner. Industry partners are Fremantle India, Hill+Knowlton Strategies, One Take Media, Pratilipi, Pocket FM and The Viral Fever. The Indian Motion Pictures Producers’ Association (IMPPA) is our community partner.
Mayank Shekhar kicked off the session by asking the panellists whether any of them had attempted creating anything on a global scale, or content that’s meant for a more global audience. He noted as well that it's not as though Indian content has not travelled across the world, it just hasn’t broken in the West.
“I don’t think that when we develop a story for a film, we look at the international audience as the primary audience,” Film Producer Sunir Kheterpal responded to Shekhar’s query. In fact, nowhere in the world, except maybe Hollywood or China, do they create movies for international audiences- they just happen, he further said. “So, most of the stuff I end up developing and that goes into production, is for the mainstream Indian audience. And if something comes out of it, great,” he added.
When it comes to storytelling and content, India is just not there yet, where enough people outside (the country) would look to us for original stories, Kheterpal noted.
The DNA of what one looks for in a story is “universal appeal”, said Friday Filmworks chief executive officer Devendra Deshpande, adding that it can be further broken down into whether the story has ‘curiosity’ and ‘awe’. “It’s not about ‘A audience’ or ‘B audience’. Whether it breaks boundaries or not, then depends on various parameters like execution, distribution etc.”
Talking about what international broadcasters are looking for, The Foundry’s Vekeana Dhillon said, “a hyperlocal story with a universal theme, that’s specific but not niche.” Where Bollywood falls into a potentially problematic zone, Dhillon adds, is the ‘Goldilocks zone’- that is, the story can’t be “too hard”, or “too soft” and it has to be just right. Because it doesn’t necessarily mean that we are getting the best product. It means we are getting a product that's a levelled out, synthesised version of something that’s not quite hyperlocal.
“We develop a lot of content in-house. And one of our stringent rules is to flesh out characters- create human tornados of angst, love, dilemma and complications,” she says, adding that is something that’s going to get you the global gaze.
According to International Media Acquisition Corp’s Shibasish Sarkar, when you write a story, regardless of which country you are from, your first approach is how much audience you want to reach. The great news is that over the last four to five years the ecosystem has evolved and the whole medium of storytelling can now reach an audience, regardless of money, distribution capability or marketing capability.
Post-pandemic, there’s a clear demarcation in audiences’ minds today on what they want to watch in a theatre and what they wish to watch at home, said Sarkar.
When you look at the kind of money that goes into making the kind of movies that Hollywood is known for, is it that they can afford it only because they have an audience across the world. Is that the threshold that India cannot afford to cross, that unless you spend that kind of money you cannot have such a huge market, asks Shekhar of the panel.
The industry experts agreed that the Indian movie industry was more into trying to find stories that would work across the country, rather than targeting a global audience.
“I think we have a bigger battle to win within our country, said Khetarpal. “Even after we cover the Hindi-speaking belt, our next challenge is how do we take our film into the Tamil-speaking and Telugu-speaking audiences.
Devendra Deshpande agreed with Khetarpal, remarking that there’s no metrics which says that spend “X” and you will get “Y” audience. It’s just a matter of time before Indian content goes global, as with technology two major barriers have been breached- One is time- as one can access anything as per convenience. And second is distribution, he noted.
We have to figure out what is our unique selling point (USP), asserted Dhillon. “Bollywood is a brand, however, Indian cinema is far more expansive than that. We have seen the success of the South so we know that. There’s far more vibrancy, far more unique tangents that we can revel in and enjoy across the board as entertainment,” she said.
The industry experts agreed that taking Indian content global is a huge opportunity, because the language has become agnostic today. People have got used to watching content with subtitles, and are consuming it across every other language, be it Indian or any other. With OTTs, Content has acquired an ability to travel, which was not there earlier in the film world.
