What is it about a movie whose language they don’t understand, whose culture is different from theirs, yet they watch it over and over again? I gathered a bunch of my students (all between 18 and 22 years old) and asked them what made Dangal so special. According to a news report, Maoyan, a popular ticketing website in China, has said that the film has done business of over 1 billion Yuan Renminbi or about Rs1,000 crore, playing on 9,000 screens in China. And this is not just restricted to Shanghai - it’s a countrywide phenomenon.
In its fourth week now, each of the malls near my home has Dangal showing anywhere from six to 12 shows a day. Dangal released on May 5 and during the first two weeks, it was on every half hour. Just in and around the area that I live in at Hongkou (close to downtown Shanghai), there are five malls, with an average of 12 theatres each. But three weeks in, I admit that the craze for Dangal has to be seen to be believed. Given how much of an average Chinese person’s time, energy and money is devoted to the cause of education and how hard, difficult and competitive the school and college system is in China, the film still, very palpably, resonates with them.Įven so, I was sceptical about the Dangal hype. But I am yet to meet a single Chinese person who has not seen 3 Idiots. While PK made over $16 million in China, the recall value of the movie is very limited. It helps that the Chinese believe that other than the song-and-dance sequences, their movies have more in common with Hindi cinema than Hollywood. One film that’s extremely popular in this category is Baahubali.
But most Chinese download our movies online and watch them regularly on their phones. At least, many from the past decade or so are. That’s not to say that Indian films are not popular. Other than 3 Idiots and PK, both Aamir Khan films, there aren’t too many Indian films that have done good business at the Chinese box office.