Bollywood, Box Office and Beyond

Lata Jha’s chronicle of the fast-changing dynamics of Indian cinema is not only timely, it is also informative and engrossing. —Shabana Azmi […] insightful, incisive book on the economics of our film industry. . —Sanjay Leela Bhansali How has the Indian film industry thrived in the last 100-plus years? Has it advanced technologically and in terms of content? Are creative minds today backed adequately by studios that claim to spend crores to give the audience an artistic thrill? For far too long, Indian filmmaking has been seen just as a pursuit of passion and creative madness. After having turned into a foreign studio-controlled ecosystem over the past few years, though, the industry has seen other forces emerge. In Bollywood, Box Office and Beyond: The Evolving Business of Indian Cinema, author and film journalist Lata Jha aims to examine these forces in detail—the tussle between multiplexes and single screens and their struggles, and the threat and opportunity that emerging streams of monetization, such as video streaming, pose for filmmaking as we know it. As readers go through the book, they can clearly visualize the challenges of box office recovery for films that are increasingly losing draw in small towns, inadequate profits for studios that are yet to fully find their feet in the crowd of local producers or lead stars demanding exorbitant rates. Bollywood, Box Office and Beyond is an ode to the behind-the-scenes struggle that makes the movie and OTT viewing experience worth the public’s money, or at least tries to.