Why Bollywood is losing its spark

Larger-than-life heroes, sweeping dance numbers, eye-catching set designs, music, drama, action, romance. Even if you haven’t watched a single Bollywood flick in your life, these will be first images that come to your mind.

With its colourful and glitzy productions, Bollywood has swept millions of fans off their feet across India and in many other parts of the world. Actors like Shah Rukh Khan and Amir Khan have taken Bollywood to novel peaks.

But despite its wide popularity, the powerhouse industry is coming under harsh criticism. Numerous posts are being shared on Social Media platforms calling for #BoycottBollywood films and many of its movie stars, adding to Bollywood’s woes.
But why are the people that were the industry’s biggest fans, suddenly predicting Bollywood’s end? Has Bollywood simply lost is spark?

On this episode of Arts Unveiled we will take you to Bollywood and find out where the industry is headed.

0:00 Intro
0:55 What is Bollywood?
2:49 India's early encounters with cinema
5:42 The rise of the masala film - it's all in the mix
7:28 The Khan Era
8:23 Voices of criticism
9:23 The times have changed
10:52 The South crushing Bollywood
11:53 Is it time to prepare Bollywood's funeral?


#india #bollywood #cinema #dwhistoryandculture #stars #film #boycottbollywood

[Eagle-oybm]

Nepotism is the major factor why people don't want to see bollywood movies. They don't select talented ones in the movie. Shocking is still the same 50-60 year old guys is doing the role of a hero in a movie !! And with the help of media, PR stunts and money in hand they make their movie forcefully hit to remain that stardom

[lathasomanathan]

Script is the King... Good story, sleek editing... Respect your audience they aren't silly... They have choices now...

[yoongi-fied]

I believe the taste and preferences of the audience has also changed. Now contents from all over the world are easily available thanks to OTT platforms. We have options, if Bollywood keeps serving half baked products, then people too would react accordingly.

[dqtrphe]

Now people are starting to understand Bollywood, they are starting to understand their PR, which does their publicity, and makes their image like a deity, and even a bad and lousy film of an actor used to become a super hit just in its name, But this whole game went on till the internet was not accessible to common people, today is the time of internet,
Today nothing is going to happen with puppet media and PR, people have become very smart now

[ciftkale]

You haven't mentioned nepotism, Pl share more about Bollywood's future,

[Capitaldoc]

Unfortunately these stars kids and special privileges to star kids and nepotism had destroyed Bollywood.

[vishnu]

They missed how South are more into content oriented movies

[rajeevdikshit]

Solid analysis. Keep up the great work DW. Lots of love from India!

[srik]

Indian Cinema, Cricket and Mother India will always strive together

[DilipKumar-scsr]

South Indian movie industry is dominating now.

[DimaRakesah]

Personally I think the style of "bollywood" has solidified enough that it transcends simply where the films are made. It's now a style. It won't die if it moves somewhere else in India, it will just shift with the times while retaining the things we love about it.

[AdnanKhan-xqkh]

Bollywood honestly has ran out of ideas, the last indian movie I watched was in 2019

[ditto]

Thank you DW for covering this. Lots of love ❤

[Ananayat]

Bollywood will fight back, it has always done it and will do it again. This similar era came in 80’s when people started having TV in there houses just like how OTT has come and many people got hooked to watching TV at home than going to cinema . That’s why 80’s is also considered to be one of the worst eras of Bollywood ( offcourse we dint have so much media otherwise there must have been a similar video in 80’s also calling ‘ Is Bollywood Over’” but the 90’s came and it came back bigger than before. And again now we are seeing a beautiful but slow rise again and by 2025-2030 Bollywood will be back bigger than before !

[starlight-de]

"Curse of SSR"
- The Revolution

[shanazirk]

The basic reason for failure o Bollywood industry are as follows :-

1)The industry never grown with current audience or the present people interest
2)After launch of OTT people have option to watch any kind of movie from any language the barier of language has been broken
Indian people started watching Malayalam ., Tamil movies which are low budget movies but with amazing artistic and realistic narration and with good content.
3)bollywood stuck with same pattern and template stories and hero/hereon oriented movies
4)Huge money flow and nepotism made the industry to stick with what they had in the last
5) A major reason of the failure is stories - After 2014 - The govt is interfering more in to ART or PR, they will interfere in to movie contents, the govt dont allow critics or any kind of stories which will be against their views - so the writers will not have any kind of freedom ...but in southindia it is in reverse, they have much freedom to express in art/movie .. it reflects in good content

[mishasinghal]

Eliminate old stars, family groupism, Bad money, Huge costing, PR Nonsense, etc.
Bring in grass roots talents from theatre, OTT, genuine social scripts based on honest representation of our societies, personas, genres at nominal costing of 100Mn - 200Mn INR
Show the audience what THEY wish to see not the Egoistic MINDS force them to see..

There are such amazing stories of north east, girl empowerment, how daughters today are supporting parents more, how dillussioned relationships, educational degrees, etc. have become

Learn something from Panchayat & other TVF series - break the old fungus moulds.

[firstpostcommenter]

Bollywood bad time started with the death of actor Sushant. So SSR (SUSHANT SINGH RAJPUT) death is being avenged by SSR (SS Rajamouli) by giving tough competition to whole bollywood.

With the advent of internet, people are more aware. And with the advent of OTT, language is not an issue anymore because of wide availability of subtitles.

Combine these 2 factors and the world has become a global village w.r.t. media industry as well.
So now unless the screenplay is good, its difficult to survive. There is high competition now between hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam industries.

“Once you overcome the one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films.” -Bong Joon-ho, Parasite movie director.

[Hexed_Precinct]

Bollywood failing because it delve on its stars and limelight. It is pretty much inwardly idea of success. It didn't approach art in a form that should give back to society that is being a source of its entirety.

[giansideros]

11:57 here's the crux of the matter, prior to the internet, the major Bollywood studios with the help of organised crime consolidated distribution of cinema in India so had an effective monopoly.

Since the arrival of high speed internet post 2000s, a new generation of Indians have had greater access to global cinema and media unlike those before them.

That alongside rising literacy rates have created a more relatively sophisticated and refined taste for media than before.

More and more younger Indians find Bollywood crude, primitive and puerile compared to foreign cinema of the US, Europe, China, Hong Kong, Korea and Japan among others.

Bollywood has a dilemma, the majority of their audience are still the older generation who put up with their complacent cinema for the past 50 years and are declining whilst the new emerging youth are sizeable and don't feel like they owe their time and money to this dated and cringe ridden relic of a bygone era of monopolistic cinema.