Bollywood is the name given to the
Mumbai-based Hindi-language film industry in
India. When combined with other Indian film
industries (Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Malayalam,
Kannada), it is considered to be the largest in the
world in terms of number of films produced, and
maybe also the number of tickets sold. The term
Bollywood was created by
conflating1 Bombay
(the city now called Mumbai) and Hollywood (the
famous center of the United States film industry).
Bollywood films are usually musicals.
Few movies are made without at least one
song-and-dance number. Indian audiences
expect2
full value for their money; they want songs and
dances, love interest, comedy and dare-devil
thrills, all mixed up in a three hour long extravaganza
with
intermission3 . Such movies are called
masala movies, after the spice mixture masala. Like
masala, these movies have everything.
The plots are often melodramatic. They frequently quently
employ
formulaic4 ingredients such as
star-crossed lovers, corrupt politicians, twins separated
at birth,
conniving5 villains, angry parents,
courtesans with hearts of gold, dramatic reversals
of fortune, and
convenient6 coincidences.
But
currently7 [...] less than 4 percent of Indians
go to the movies regularly. Moreover, India does
not really have that many cinemas for people to
go to – less than 13,000, versus almost 40,000 in
the U.S. (a country which has only one-fourth of
India's population). The average Bollywood film
costs only about $1.5 million to make, versus $47.7
million for Hollywood. The Indian film industry produces over 2,000 films per year and is worth around $5 billion.
1. mixing
2. want
3. pause, break
4. parts of a formula
5. plotting
6. practical
7. at the moment