India is a box office gold mine. Year in, year out thousands of films are produced, screened and consumed, with national and regional megastars and production houses raking in the moolah. But with a mind-bogglingly large domestic industry already ruling the roost, the Indian box office has traditionally offered relatively slim pickings for English-language Hollywood offerings — especially compared to the opportunities in other non-American geographies.
The 20-film Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), however, has upended that equation over the last decade. In fact, its last major offering — Avengers: Infinity War — ousted The Jungle Book as the top-grossing English movie of all time in the Indian market this year. According to international box office tracker Box Office Mojo, the film raked in a gross USD 44.6 million from Indian audiences since its May 2018 launch — upwards of Rs 300 crore! India was among the film’s top five highest-grossing markets the first two weeks after release, raking in close to Rs 200 crore.
While the numbers do not come close to some mega-starrers produced at home, they do leave behind almost every other local film in the dust. “Infinity War was the top grossing film in every major urban centre on the weekend of its release,” admitted a senior executive at a top distributor. With the Avengers franchise now all set to draw to a close with ‘Endgame’ next summer, industry observers say the final installation is likely to be even bigger than ‘Infinity War’.
Sources add that the audience pulling potential of ‘Endgame’ is already prompting local filmmakers to take its release date into consideration while planning their own launches. “This is quite unprecedented for an English film,” another distribution executive pointed out. For Marvel Entertainment, and its owner Disney, India and its superhero-worshipping fans have become a lucrative market.
In fact, four out of the six MCU films released in India in 2017 and 2018 gathered more than USD 11 million each (upwards of Rs 70 crore), with ‘Infinity War’ coming in as the cherry on top. Even Ant-Man and the Wasp, which was released in July this year, beat almost every other local offering in theatres during its first weekend — a laudable feat for a film starring a relatively lesser-known super-hero.
“It made close to Rs 19 crore in the first three days. Black Panther made much more. These movies now do well even in non-urban centres when dubbed versions are launched,” noted one distributor. The market’s potential has not escaped Marvel’s top leadership either, with several executives repeatedly stressing the South Asian market’s importance. While Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige acknowledged their growing Indian fanbase in 2016, Stephen Wacker vice-president of Creative Development even speculated during his visit to India this year that one of the studio’s next superheroes could well be from Mumbai or Delhi.
