Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Product merchandising a great potential of Bollywood

Bollywood is considered to be the second largest film industry in the world and in terms of film released per year, Bollywood is far ahead than Bollywood. However, when it comes to doing business Hollywood is always far ahead of Bollywood. Product endorsement and movie merchandise is a big business in USA but not in India. The good thing is that the film producers are now understanding the potential of product merchandising. Cinematical reports:

Indian cinema isn't like US cinema ... at least not yet. In 2003, the cinematically prolific India had close to double the feature films of the US -- 877 -vs- 473. Is it a big, sacred cash cow? It might not seem so with movie tickets costing less than half of one US dollar, but last year the industry raked in over a billion dollars -- imagine the profits if they paid what we do! While the sheer size of the industry makes the North America's look teeny, they can't come close to the power of the movie merchandise business -- at least not yet.

Derek Bose, the author of Brand Bollywood: A New Entertainment Order told Reuters that "Bollywood's top producers and studios have woken up to the possibility of earning money other than from the box office which can not remain their only revenue source." Yes, they've woken up and smelled the possibilities. The industry has embraced the idea of media convergence, and are delighting in multi-platform branding. Last year, Krrish, a huge Bollywood sci-fi hit, came out with everything from action dolls to costumes and stationary.

Hollywood is one of the oldest and most reputed film industries in the world. No wonder what Hollywood thinks today the rest of the world thinks tomorrow. However, Indian cinema industry is not negligible any more. Aside from India Hindi movies are very popular in Middle East, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and in many other countries in the world. Along with this there is the increasing number of audience in Europe and America. India movie industry is at its zenith. This is the best time to do business.

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