Foreign Distribution of Indian Films and Distribution of Foreign Films in India
The recent success of Devdas overseas has highlighted the commercial potential of Indian films abroad. With large expatriate Indian communities, the UK and the USA, in particular, have for some time been seen as good markets for the distribution and screening of Indian films. Increasingly however, Indian films are appealing to a wider non-Indian audience in these countries, thereby creating the accompanying commercial space for the exploitation of their potential overseas. This trend is likely to benefit foreign distributors seeking to cash in on the commercial opportunities that Indian films present abroad. A more immediate opportunity, however, for foreign studios is the market in India for Hollywood films, which has been growing steadily. One has to only look at the phenomenal success of Spiderman, distributed by Columbia Tri-Star with 230 prints in four Indian languages. 20th Century Fox and Columbia Tri-Star have become the first foreign players to establish Indian distributionoperations.13 These Hollywood film studios look set to take advantage of a recent relaxation in import restrictions on films into India, which reduces the time difference between the date of release of a film in the USA and its release inIndia.14 Under the earlier rules, films could only be imported into India under licence.
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