Baahubali 2 China box office collection: SS Rajamouli team may lose more than Rs 1,000 crore

The makers of SS Rajamouli's Baahubali 2 (Bahubali: The Conclusion), starring Prabhas and Rana Daggubati, may lose over Rs 1,000 crore at the China box office, says an expert from Indywood.

Baahubali 2, which was released in theatres on April 28, ran housefull and became a blockbuster with its collections nearing Rs 1,700 crore at the worldwide box office. The Prabhas and Rana Daggubati starrer is now gearing up for a grand release in China. The massive success of Dangal in China has generated high hopes for Baahubali 2 and everyone is busy predicting its business in the neighbour country.

But experts feel that the makers of Baahubali 2 may lose over Rs 1,000 crore due to cluttered distribution network. "If Bahubali second part receives rousing reception from China like Dangal had, the revenue would have crossed Rs 3,500 crore. However, it is a fact that the producers of magnum opus movie directed by SS Rajamouli might lose more than Rs 1,000 crore due to cluttered distribution network of Indian movies across the globe," opines an expert from Indywood.

"Big ticket Indian films make huge profits, but the foreign distributors get more than 90 percent. The producers get only fewer margins for overseas rights. Sometimes the distributor will fetch good revenue, may be ten times double of overseas rights amount from a small country like UAE alone," says the expert.

This kind of exploitation has been going on for decades and Indian film industry started to lose its ground gradually due to closing down of cinemas and poor projection quality. But the initiation of USD 10 billion (Rs. 67,000 crore) project by Indywood by a consortium of 2,000 Indian corporates and billionaires may change the destiny of the industry by 2020. It will help make the entire industry integrated, structured and modernised.

Project Indywood has already started working towards increasing the number of screens and enhance the quality of the projection. "More than 10,000 4K multiplex screens having minimum 5,000 loyal customers for each along with thousands of village screens and 100,000 4K ATMOS home cinemas are also getting ready as part of the Project Indywood," he says.

"The salient feature of the consortium is that each member can make multiplexes and movies independently for their own branding choice and the consortium will take care of management. Besides a network of 7,000 releasing çentres outside India with 10 million regular viewers connected through social media is also getting ready to make Indian movie distribution system better than Hollywood" he adds.

Baahubali 2 is the biggest movie ever produced in India, but it could have been released in hundreds of languages and hundreds of countries on a single date. However the unavailability of wide dubbing facility in India has delayed its releasing in some major international markets like China. The Project Indywood is working to create this platform of dubbing in various languages for the Indian filmmakers.

"The integrated dubbing and restoration centre to dub in more than 100 languages under high security shall be operational before 2020 as part of Project Indywood. The revenue figures through satellite rights shall be drastically changed once the movie gets dubbed into so many different languages. Global wide release network system to ensure maximum screenings for a movie at time is in the pipeline," says the expert.

"Indywood is trying to act as the single point selection and distribution hub for many countries like China where number of foreign movie distribution is limited to few every year. In fact it was Indywood which highlighted immense potential of Bahubali to Chinese Movie Selection director during a discussion on Indo-China co-production project possibilities. China Giant Screen has already signed a deal with Indywood to make 300 giant screens in India," he added.

The Baahubali film series would have collected more than USD 1.5 billion (Rs 10,000 crore), if it was planned for 2020 worldwide release. Hope Indian James Cameron Rajamouli will come back with another Avatar-like epic by 2020 to break all records to recover the Rs-1000-crore loss of Baahubali producers with the support of Project Indywood," says the expert.