Bollywood superstar, Aamir Khan of the 3 Idiots fame, has made a remarkable hit of his wrestling movie, Dangal, becoming the first Indian movie to gross over 20 billion rupees, an equivalent of $300 million, at the box office.
Since 105 years of Indian cinema, Anu Raghunathan, Forbes’s Indian entrepreneurs analyst wrote, “No movie had ever crossed the Rs 1,000 crore ($156 million) mark and now Dangal has hit the Rs 2000 crore mark ($300 million).”
The Bahubali sequel, a mythological film, and PK, the science fiction also featuring Aamir Khan, were Bollywood’s benchmarks of box office success, raking in an estimate of $265 million and $ 120 million respectively.
Analysts believe part of Dangal’s success was its unprecedented penetration of China’s 9000 cinemas, tapping into a whopping audience of 2.5 billion people from two countries.
Sources state also that Dangal, has made over $189 million in China alone since its release on the 5th of May, 2016 and is still running.
Produced by Aamir Khan Productions in collaboration with India’s UTV Motion Pictures and directed by Nitesh Tiwari, Dangal is said to thematise issues which resonate with the Chinese audience, namely gender discrimination and strict parenting.
“The movie is based on the true story of wrestling coach, Mahavir Singh Phogat, who defies the odds by raising his daughters, Geeta and Babita Phogat to become champion wrestlers,” wrote an Indian film trade analyst, Ramesh Bala.
“Geeta won a gold medal for India at the 2010 Commonwealth Games, while her sister topped the podium at the same event in 2014.
“Dangal” is a Hindu word used to describe a wrestling competition.
Critics believe that China may be an attractive market for movie production, even though some of Indian movies have made tremendous impacts outside its climes.
