India’s highest grossing film, Baahubali 2: The Conclusion opened to a rock in Chinese theatres on May 4.The S.S Rajamouli directed war epic, that has made more than Rs1000 crore in lifetime box office earnings in India, managed about $7.63 million (Rs51.20 crore) in China over the first three days.
Baahubali 2, meanwhile, is a fantastical retelling of the Indian epic legends that revolve around the triumph of good over evil, packed with heavyduty action and melodrama.
The audience in China is looking for slice-of-life stories from India. If they wanted action-oriented movies with great graphics and special effects, Hollywood would be the best option, said independent trade analyst Sreedhar Pillai.
Since Avengers: Infinity War is releasing this Friday in the Chinese market, Baahubali 2 will face a huge competitors at the ticket windows. With the help of China collections, the film now stands with the worldwide total of Rs 1760 crore, which makes it the second highest Indian global grosser after Aamir Khan’s Dangal, which had earned over Rs 1200 crore in the Chinese market alone.
This is not a plot on the opening weekend earnings of some recent Indian film blockbusters in China—Aamir Khan’s musical production Secret Superstar had made over $27 million (Rs182 crore) when it opened in China earlier this year, Irrfan Khan-starrer Hindi Medium had collected $15 million (Rs105 crore) while Khan’s sports drama Dangal had earned $13 million (Rs92 crore). Salman Khan-starrer Bajrangi Bhaijaan that made it to China this year, almost three years after its theatrical showcasing in India made $8 million (Rs56 crore) in the first three days. Baahubali was released in 7,000 screens in China.
Trade website Box Office India said the film needs to hit the $20 million mark for the Chinese distributors to recover the cost of releasing the film in China, which does not look easy after the opening weekend. “All the Indian films that have worked in China, be it Dangal, Secret Superstar or Bajrangi Bhaijaan, were all riding on the emotional, socially relevant wave,” said Atul Mohan, editor of trade magazine Complete Cinema referring to the narrative themes of the Indian success stories in China. While Dangal, set in rural India, focused on a father-daughter relationship, Secret Superstar was about a young small-town girl struggling to break away from the patriarchal shackles of Indian society and her own home. Bajrangi Bhaijaan, meanwhile, was the story of a golden-hearted simpleton who takes a small child lost in India back home to Pakistan.