Will Slumdog Millionaire's Box Office Success Lead to More Interest in Bollywood?

Many Hollywood watchers and film enthusiasts wonder if Slumdog Millionaire's recent success at the box office, and multiple award attention at the 2009 Golden Globes, will lead to an increased interest in Bollywood films (movies from India).

Slumdog Millionaire's musical score by A.R. Rahman, in addition to an all-Indian cast, has certainly shown studio executives that an "ethnic" film with all non-white leads can become a critical and commercial smash hit.

The film was directed by the capable Danny Boyle, who was before this project perhaps best known for directing the controversial "Trainspotting", a film about drug abuse and addiction.

Hollywood generally follows the money; wherever it senses a new market-and the most box office dollars-it will go. "Importing" Bollywood films and producing ethnic films now seems like a viable option. Not only are these films relatively cheap to produce and distribute (when compared to, say, Spiderman or The Dark Knight); they also are valuable commercial properties which can be sold to massive overseas markets.

Any movie with a predominantly Indian or Asian cast, for example, can easily be exported to the Indian and Asian markets-reaching a combined total of billions of moviegoers. Also, the studios stand to gain massive revenues from eventual television broadcast rights of such movies in these high-population countries.

In Bollywood films, Hollywood executives may sense the best of both worlds: the ability to produce "prestige-worthy" films that attract critics' attention and garner important awards, while also reaching mass audiences and creating record profits.

In the past, it has all too often been a case of "pick one or the other" where critically acclaimed pictures tended to underperform commercially while commercial hits like Ironman, for example, failed to garner any awards at, say, Cannes.

Will Hollywood always place an emphasis on commercial action films and easy-to-promote, star-driven romantic comedies? Sure it will. But with the success of Slumdog Millionaire, Hollywood will also be more likely to take big risks in the future on other foreign films-and to provide the valuable nationwide theatre distribution necessary to produce a box office hit.

Just as Bruce Lee's success several decades ago paved the way for a whole new genre of Asian-inspired martial arts films, the success of Slumdog Millionaire today may create a whole new genre of films in America-the Bollywood-for-American-audiences niche market. Only time, and moviegoers, will tell.