The enormous importance of creative content—stressed by participant after participant at the conference—was introduced by keynote speaker Peter Liguori, CEO of Fox Broadcasting Corporation. Liguori exhorted the media-makers in the audience to attract audience interest by making “disruptive” and unpredictable choices in subject matter, storytelling, and casting. “Creativity is key to content, and content trumps all,” he noted.
Pradeep Guha, former president of both Zee Telefilms and the Times Group of India, also took up the issue of creative content in relation to Indian and U.S.-Indian media ventures. Guha identified crossover film productions, with American studios doing back-end work in India, as potential moneymakers. However, he cautioned that filmmakers who expect to drive the bilingual multiplex market with Bollywood-Hollywood co-productions have not yet achieved their goal. “The content is not keeping pace,” Guha said, calling for “originality… within the traditional Hindi film format” to bring in NRI and foreign filmgoers. He suggested that filmmakers might someday create separate products to appeal to diaspora audiences, but separate markets are not yet viable.
Referring to Bollywood as “India’s biggest brand,” Guha expressed little patience for South Asian filmmakers who dilute the brand’s global power by copying Western ideas. “The strength of Bollywood is song and dance, and we must make a damned good job of it,” he said emphatically. “We are embarrassed about our song and dance. Just make it better!”
Many panelists in SAMMA Summit parallel sessions agreed with Guha that specifically Indian entertainment content could lead to success for both South Asian and foreign investors. Sharad Devarajan of Liquid Comics, which began as Virgin Comics with capital from billionaire Richard Branson, described the pressure to use his stable of artists simply for outsourcing foreign animation. “We wanted to move India from outsource to source,” he said. “We didn’t want to make Shrek 7; we wanted to create Shrek.” The company now creates comics, games, and films based on South Asian content.
Michael Andreen, Senior V.P. for International Production at Disney, noted that Disney is currently “making films explicitly for the Indian market.” Andreen praised the Indian cinematic tradition of character-driven storytelling with spectacular song and dance, but he noted that in other respects Disney has “shied away from the typical Bollywood model.” The company wants to create small, contemporary films for a sophisticated multiplex audience, avoiding most of the powerful stars who wield clout in traditional Bollywood.
But finding excellent content does not necessarily result in successful entertainment. Andreen believes that the South Asian film industry needs Hollywood production know-how. U.S. filmmakers tend to have more structured productions and to adhere more closely to budgets and schedules than their South Asian counterparts. American companies also follow a more highly developed scriptwriting process. Andreen argued that the U.S. view that “the script is the only reason you make a picture” seems “heretical” to many Indian filmmakers. Nevertheless, Disney has sent scriptwriters to Bollywood, hoping to replace the Indian method of oral narration with a Western model of a revised, written script.
Filmmaker Rohan Sippy, whose forthcoming Chandni Chowk to China is co-produced by Warner Brothers, resisted the suggestion that successful Bollywood films require more structure. Sippy argued instead that irrationality can be necessary to the filmmaking process, which he admitted was “sometimes chaotic.” Agreeing with Liquid Comics’ Devarajan that scripts should take more risks, he noted that a highly rational production process would have prevented his father and grandfather from making the massively successful Sholay.
Sippy does see value in Hollywood marketing, which targets appropriate audiences based on the film’s content. Asked who the audiences are for today’s crossover productions, Sippy responded, “I’ll find out when they release.”
Marketing can improve the odds of a film finding its audience, and new media distribution methods can help even more. Peter Liguori of Fox called digital media platforms an opportunity, not a threat; new distribution systems have historically meant that “the pie just gets larger.”
Young entrepreneurs at the SAMMA Summit agreed that digital platforms are the wave of the future. Vin Bhat of Saavn, a digital distributor of Bollywood films, cited a Reliance-Dreamworks study showing that 1 out of 5 consumers in the United States has sampled South Asian films or songs. Bhat argued that today’s Bollywood is different not because of content—the films still tell “timeless stories with cross-generational appeal”—but because consumers have more options for access to the content they increasingly want.
Geetanjali Dhillon of the entertainment site Jaman sees digital platforms as a way to expand “the democratization of media” and ensure that more filmmakers’ work is seen. Jaman licenses international films that probably would not otherwise get U.S. theatrical distribution; Dhillon uses social media marketing strategies to drive viewers to films they may like.
The pluses of social media marketing may even outweigh concerns about digital platforms enabling media piracy. Disney’s Michael Andreen agreed that content creators “need to be selective in advance about what they do show.” However, he noted that digital communities often take “ownership” of anticipated films and may feel alienated if filmmakers refuse to provide online content.
The SAMMA Summit offered reasons to be cheerful about the future of South Asian entertainment. Solid creative content, attention to infrastructure, and judicious use of new media platforms may give media creators and distributors a clearer path into the uncertain future.
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