By Shailesh Kapoor
The year 2023 had its fair share of success stories, across cinema and OTT at least. Here’s my pick of the five most significant landmarks of the year (in chronological order), which could, in turn, shape how Indian entertainment pans out in the next half decade at least.
The return of SRK, and the old guard in general
January saw Shah Rukh Khan mark a box-office comeback with Pathaan. It had been a decade since he had a bona fide hit (Chennai Express). But with Pathaan, he announced his return, in an innings that’s already seeming a lot of fun. Pathaan was followed in September by Jawan, which went on to become an even bigger success. SRK’s December release Dunki has received mixed response, and significantly lower collections. But with SRK, and with Sunny Deol in Gadar 2, it seems like we are back in the ’90s. Superstars from that era are showing the young guys how it’s done!
Farzi: The Real Thing
In what was not the best year for OTT (curtailed subscriber growth, very few breakout properties), one show stood out as an outright blockbuster: Raj-DK’s Farzi, on Prime Video, starring Shahid Kapoor and Vijay Sethupathi, became the most-watched Indian SVOD show of all time, with an estimated 37 Million (Ormax Media estimates) Indians having watched at least one episode. Coming after the immensely successful and appreciated The Family Man, Farzi established Raj-DK as one of the most powerful names in the Indian streaming space. Their next venture Guns & Gulaabs (Netflix) fell short of achieving the same heights. But Farzi’s success confirmed that mass entertainers, rather than urban-centric understated content, is likely to be the way ahead for web-series in India.
JioCinema: A ‘free’ ride
The arrival of JioCinema, with an IPL edition that was free to stream, brought in a sea change in the Indian OTT landscape in March 2023. The platform made some of the global giants relook at their India strategy. Disney+ Hotstar offered the Cricket World Cup free later in the year. JioCinema backed the IPL season with a plethora of launches, most notably Asur 2 and Taali. But over the last four-five months, they have gone easy on things, and relied more on non-fiction properties, especially Bigg Boss. Perhaps IPL 2024 is when we will see more activity around the platform.
Barbenheimer
Who would have thought that a Hollywood film clash will make headlines in India? The Barbie vs. Oppenheimer weekend in August 2023 brought in about Rs. 100 Cr (gross) worth of box office in India, which was also one of the few countries where Oppenheimer was ahead of Barbie at the box office. Hollywood has not had its best year in India, with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Hollywood’s mainstay in the Indian market, being on some sort of a downtrend. But with Oppenheimer, we saw audiences flocking theatres in the service of a director urban India has come to love: Christopher Nolan.
Animal instincts
December 2023 saw the release of director Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s Animal, a film that polarised critics, but was largely embraced by the audiences, going on to become one of the most significant success stories of the year, especially because it’s headlined by a younger star (not from the ‘old guard’). After Atlee’s Jawan, Vanga’s Animal established the firm hold directors from South India are beginning to have on Hindi audience’s imagination, through their distinctive style of storytelling. Everything about Animal, right from its trailer to the choreography and background music of its action set-pieces, broke conventional rules of mass Indian cinema. And it was very heartening that another film (12th Fail) that came just a month before Animal, and broke a few rules of cinema too, also got immense audience love, especially for its scale, cast and budget. That Animal and 12th Fail can co-exist augurs well for Hindi cinema, which had its best-ever year by some margin.