MxMIndia

Tag: K.G.F: Chapter 2

  • We can expect that the second half of 2022 will not be short of fireworks, writes Shailesh Kapoor

    2022: Six Months & Counting

     

     

    By Shailesh Kapoor

     

    Shailesh KapoorJust like that, we are already into the second half of 2022. It’s been a somewhat unusual year for the Indian entertainment business. The last two years have been heavily impacted by the pandemic, but 2022 has had a more ‘normal’ feel to it, and that itself has been refreshing.

     

    The maximum action was seen on the theatrical front, with a slew of new releases seeing audiences go back to the theatres in big numbers across India. K.G.F: Chapter 2 and RRR have been huge success stories, with the latter finding enhanced fan following in the US after its Netflix release in May. The Hindi theatrical market, which has struggled for two years now, saw sporadic success beyond the dubbed versions of the two blockbusters mentioned above. The Kashmir Files, Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2 and Gangubai Kathiawadi got the audience, while several other films, including big-ticket Akshay Kumar starrers Bachchhan Pandey and Samrat Prithviraj, struggled at the box office.

     

    In the first six months of the year, Hindi language’s share of the domestic gross box office stands at about 35%, down from 44% in the pre-pandemic year (2019), but up from 27% in the two pandemic years put together (2020-21). The twist in the tale is that a staggering 43% of Hindi box office in Jan-Jun 2022 has come from Hindi dubbed version of South Indian films.

     

    While theatrical films grabbed the headlines, this half-year period has been somewhat muted for the streaming category. There has been a spate of new launches across platforms, but very few have achieved unqualified success. Rudra (Disney+ Hotstar), Panchayat S2 (Prime Video) and Aashram S3 (MX Player) crossed an estimated viewership of 25 Million audience in India, while Rocket Boys and the recently-launched Suzhal: The Vortex have received widespread critical acclaim.

     

    News of Netflix struggling to grow its subscriber base, worldwide and in India, continued to surface every few weeks in this half year. Big brands can sometimes feel the burden of giant expectations they set for themselves, and Netflix currently faces this challenge on the global front.

     

    As usual, there wasn’t much in the television content space to write home about. A deftly-executed season of Shark Tank India was noticed and appreciated, but its success was largely streaming-centric, as the show failed to find a sizeable audience on linear television.

     

    While there was little action on the content side, the TV industry was not short of action on the industry side, with the return of the news ratings, and the subsequent mad rush we witnessed, in which almost every news channel staked a claim at the no. 1 position. February was the elections month that saw five states, including Uttar Pradesh and Punjab, go to the polls. News channels had enough on their plate to keep themselves busy, including controversies around several prominent anchors.

     

    But the big media story of the first half of 2022 is the astronomical price for which the IPL broadcast rights were sold. The auctions place IPL unquestionably at the top position on the list of the most powerful media brand in India, in a year that also saw two new teams make their IPL debut, one of which went on to win it.

     

    If the first half of the year is any indication, we can expect that the second half of 2022 will not be short of fireworks.

     

  • Dubbing has unlocked a world of content hitherto inaccessible to wider Indian audiences, writes Shailesh Kapoor

    Dubbed & Delivered: K.G.F, Doctor Strange & more

     

     

    By Shailesh Kapoor

     

    Shailesh KapoorThe success of K.G.F: Chapter 2 has emerged as the big entertainment headline of 2022 so far. The film has gone on to do exceptional box-office in multiple markets, including overseas. In the Hindi language, the film is now the second biggest domestic grosser of all time, after Bahubali 2: The Conclusion.

     

    Both K.G.F: Chapter 2 and Bahubali 2 are films from southern parts of India, made originally in Kannada and Telugu respectively. RRR, another Telugu film, is also a big grosser of this year. By the time 2022 ends, we may have seen a few more of their ilk.

     

    Doctor Strange: In The Multiverse Of Madness released last week to opening collections in India that no Hindi film has been able to achieve since the pandemic started. A large share of the film’s collection has come from the language-dubbed versions, i.e., Hindi, Tamil and Telugu.

     

    Can one call this the breaking of the ‘language barrier’? Technically, that will be an inaccurate description, because the language of consumption is the local language of comfort, not the language in which the content has been originally been produced.

     

    In our yet-unreleased report titled ‘The Ormax OTT Audience Profiling Report: 2022’, a typical paid streaming audience (SVOD) is watching content in 2.3 languages. But if you include the languages in which dubbed or subtitled versions are being watched, this number doubles to 4.6. The equivalent numbers are 1.8 and 2.3 for AVOD audiences. The big difference is the D-word: Dubbing.

     

    Dubbed content has been around in India for two decades now, with Hindi movie channels thriving on Hindi-dubbed versions of South Indian action films. These films found a core audience (typically men in the smaller towns and the lower socio-economic strata) over time, and the ratings from this core group fueled more acquisition and programming of such content over the years. Licensing fees of South Indian dubs have seen upward revision to the degree of 10X, perhaps even more, over the last 15 years.

     

    But South dubs on Hindi movie channels were treated with a touch of condescension by the cosmopolitan audience, which includes the media fraternity, ranging from advertisers to Hindi-language content creators. “Set Max” (as Sony Max is popularly called) entered the pop culture for its love for such films, along with its love for Sooryavansham, a Hindi film that has its origins in the South of India too. There were ratings, but a perception of legitimacy, if one can call it that, was missing.

     

    Things started to change around 2015, for two parallel, unrelated reasons. The first reason was the Bahubali franchise. The first Bahubali film that year raised the bar on South Indian dubbed content overnight, and by several notches. Around the same time, the Marvel Cinematic Universe had started building a loyal teenage and youth fanbase in India, leading to dramatic growth in Hollywood box office in India, which has multiplied by a factor of 3 from 2014 to 2019.

     

    The next big boost came during the pandemic, when streaming consumption skyrocketed, and a large section of audience started sampling content (both films and series) in non-native languages, via dubbing or subtitling options. This included not just Indian languages and English, but also other foreign languages like Korean, Spanish, German, etc. The Spanish series Money Heist was the most-watched Netflix content in India in 2021, ahead of all Indian series and films. Money Heist was available to watch in English, Hindi, Tamil & Telugu in the India market.

     

    Dubbing has unlocked a world of content that was hitherto inaccessible to the wider Indian audience. The possibility that the next big content wave may come from an unexpected part of India, or the world, is now a real one.

     

    It doesn’t make the task of content creators any easier. The Hindi film industry has been facing an identity crisis of sorts, as it sees Hollywood and South Indian films outperform, while big-ticket Hindi films struggle to find audience in their native markets, let alone down South in the dubbed versions.

     

    But the audience is not complaining. And that’s why, you can expect a lot more action on this front in the coming times.

     

  • Everyone wants to talk trade. Box-office, ratings and subscriber bases have seeped into B2C terminology, writes Shailesh Kapoor

    Looking consumer, talking trade

     

     

     

    By Shailesh Kapoor

     

    Shailesh KapoorWe are four months into 2022, and the year has not been short of action on the Indian M&E front. The month of April itself has been full of big announcements, of new companies being formed, of big companies getting new owners, and of new collaborations on the creative front. It’s also been a month where a film that has delivered some astonishing box office numbers, i.e., K.G.F: Chapter 2. Bollywood is facing an identity crisis, of its own making, as cinema from the South of India makes heavy inroads into the Hindi market. Some streaming platforms are finding it hard to grow subscribers in a post-pandemic scenario, but others continue to scale up their offering. News television ratings are back. All this while the IPL goes on, and we begin to build up to the suspense around the renewal of IPL’s broadcast rights.

     

    Can you spot a pattern in these key events? They are all trade developments. They are B2B events or announcements that the average consumer, who’s not invested in a media business, has no interest in. An IPL fan will watch IPL wherever it is available. Streamers will choose their content and subscriptions according to their taste. The viewing of news does not depend on whether it is being measured or not. The box office of a film does not make it any less or more likeable for someone who chooses to watch it. Most audience of television and streaming content do not care about who the owners or shareholders of the channel or the platform they are watching are.

     

    The B2C narrative has been marginalised. This has been a growing trend over the last few years. Why should this happen, I often wonder. In the older days too, there was always enough action on the B2B front. But the general narrative was always about content and marketing. There will be articles and interviews around shows, films, ad campaigns, the works. You would want to know more about a series you follow, or about the making of a movie that you loved. But these topics are not easy to find even on social media, forget the mainstream. Everyone wants to talk trade. Box office, ratings and subscriber bases have seeped into B2C terminology.

     

    My hypothesis is that this is an outcome of a paid media economy created over the years. The Times of India introduced its ‘advertorial’ service Medianet more two decades ago. Since then, the term ‘Medianet’ has become a generic for all paid plug-ins across publications, including those online, and those not owned by BCCL. For some curious reason, a large share of such ‘advertorials’ comes from M&E companies, who possibly see paid PR as a good way to reach their target audience. For some reason, such communication tends to be business-centric at times, talking box-office and viewership, to lure audience to watch a particular show or film.

     

    Over two decades of doing this, the lines have blurred. B2B PR is the new B2C PR. The consumer did not care initially, but now, it’s so mainstream that they have learnt to embrace it all… with the jargon and the half knowledge.

     

    I miss the old days, when you could read a meandering, long-form piece on a film you had liked. Today, one looks for blogs and vlogs that still try and keep that culture intact, with little or no funding backing them. But it’s never the same as reading or watching on linear television.