By Kim Chisnall
In terms of size of audience and films made, the Bollywood film industry dwarfs its Western equivalent – but the films don’t make money outside of India.
Bollywood film director Karan Joha is hoping to change that, with a film that reaches out to the global market through a subject matter that binds us all – terrorism.
Leave your preconceptions about what Bollywood films look like at the cinema door, because My Name is Khan is, according to its director, a new kind of Indian film.
“It doesn’t have the prerequisites of a mainstream Indian film,” says Mr Joha.
“It doesn’t have the elaborate song and dance sequences. It doesn’t have the lip-synching songs.”
Set in post-9/11 America, My Name Is Khan tells the story of an Indian couple coming to terms with new prejudices from their fellow Americans.
The film shows how persecution can flow from something as simple as a surname.
The cast’s own Khan had no trouble at all when it came to getting in character.
“I’ve been stopped. I get stopped even now when I’m coming in many places. But it’s alright I guess – you decide to go to a country you have to follow the rules,” says Shar Rukh Khan.
“I’ve been thinking I should buy myself a private jet, quicker and easier.”
Mr Khan has more fans than any other movie star in the world – he is called “the king of Bollywood”, with an empire of 70 films.
But he says he has no urge to abdicate to Hollywood.
“I don’t think I have a special talent – I can’t do kung fu, I’m not immensely good looking. They have enough actors of my age, so unless there is a role for a 44-year-old brown Indian with ruffled hair,” he says.
It may seem ambitious to promote a largely subtitled film so heavily in the English market, but consider the strength of the Indian film industry.
Hollywood produces on average 500 films each year, for a worldwide audience of 2.6 billion people, Bollywood can produce more than 1000 films a year, and has an audience that tops three billion.
Just don’t go confusing My Name Is Khan with the Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire.
“It’s an international film, it’s an English language film directed by celebrated international film maker Danny Boyle,” Mr Joha says of Slumdog.
“We are definitely not Slumdog, we are a Hindi language film that is a Bollywood offering.”
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