There?s one thing that characterises mainstream Indian films: its largely escapist fare that aims at drawing the audience into its surreal world of music, dance and melodrama. We have enjoyed this peculiarly Bollywood masala for years. Most actors in India have built their careers doing this, some of them going on to become demigods and goddesses. Directors and producers in general have thrived on this keeping alive their celluloid dreams with releases year after year. It?s not without reason then that Bollywood is one of the largest producers of movies in the world, churning out an average of 1,000 movies a year. The dream factory rolls and the West is finally taking note of this. It?s visible in the transatlantic rage: Slumdog Millionaire.

The movie borrows heavily from mainstream Indian film conventions to present what is essentially an adaptation of the book Q and A by Vikas Swarup. The story is about an impoverished boy who has answers to all the questions posed to him on a popular gameshow. That is just half the story.

The other is the treatment, which, as pointed earlier, is much like any other Bollywood flick. There is music, dance and all the bells and whistles interwoven in a tale about two long-lost brothers, about a girl and boy in love, how they are separated by the villain, in this case, a notorious gangster. The girl becomes the gangster?s moll. The boy?s elder brother is converted into a hardened criminal and the boy himself, lonely now, works as a chaiwala in a call centre. But as luck would have it, the boy finds his way into a gameshow, winning the prize money as well as the girl whom he loves, and who follows the show avidly. And guess what, the closing credits then imitate a Bollywood-style musical number!

Clearly, Slumdog has all the trappings of a masala movie. Vijay Singh, chief executive officer, Fox Star Studios, the company distributing the film in India, says, ?It?s a Bollywood story. It?s a story about hope, of triumph against all odds, about rags to riches.?

And people across the world have lapped it up. By some accounts, Slumdog is playing in over 600 screens in the US at the moment. It is also one of the few movies with an Indian subtext that has managed to become one of the highest grossers at the North American box office in a matter of a few weeks following release. Not just that. Slumdog won five of the six awards it was nominated for at the Critics Choice Awards and all four of the awards it was nominated for at the Golden Globe Awards.

Jodhaa Akbar, for the record, took about nine weeks to average collections of about $3.4 million in North America.

Slumdog took about three weeks following release in November 2008 to touch the $3.8-million-mark in the region.

Brand India has indeed arrived, in the world of entertainment to say the least. According to Aparna Dutt Sharma, chief executive officer, India Brand Equity Foundation, an initiative by the Confederation of Indian Industry to promote the country across the world, ?Brand India was always there. One saw strains of it in Hollywood films such as Moulin Rouge, released in 2001, where the Indian song and dance sequence was used. There was also a generous dose of melodrama in the film, commonplace in Indian cinema.?

What makes Slumdog so endearing is that it is a break from the past in terms of crossover cinema. Films belonging to this genre?primarily from a motley group of filmmakers including Mira Nair, Deepa Mehta and Gurinder Chadha?have largely revolved around the agony and ecstasy of Indians settled abroad. The Namesake, directed by Mira Nair and released in 2007, for instance or Bend It Like Beckham, directed by Gurinder Chadha and released in 2001 or Mississippi Masala, directed by Mira Nair again and released in 1991, are cases in point. All of them have been path-breaking movies that essentially looked at the life of Indians settled abroad-in the US, the UK and Uganda to be precise.

There have been some notable exceptions though. Salaam Bombay!, released in 1988 and Monsoon Wedding, released in 2001, both of them directed by Mira Nair, are movies with Indian backdrops?one set in the streets of Mumbai, the other in Delhi. Though critically acclaimed, none tasted the kind of success that Slumdog has, though Monsoon Wedding did have Bollywood conventions?a Punjabi family, an ostentatious marriage ceremony etc. It did do some decent amount of business at the international box office largely on account of the Indian diaspora that lapped it up happily.

What makes the Slumdog story so interesting is the fact that it is drawing Western audiences in large numbers. ?It?s a movie that has brought the Indian film as we understand it to mainstream western audiences,? says Danish Khan, head of marketing at Sony Entertainment Television. ?It?s pioneering in that sense.?

At a time when the financial climate across the world looks bleak, a dose of Bollywood masala seems to be bringing back the smiles onto myriad faces. In a recent interview, Anil Kapoor, who plays the role of the quizmaster of the gameshow in Slumdog says, ?It?s amazing to see how well the movie has been received in the US. The case is the same in Europe. The movie gives you a sense of hope at a time when everything appears bleak.? Says trade analyst Taran Adarsh, ?All human-interest stories do that. It?s nice that this one is layered with Bollywood conventions. That should help increase acceptance for it in India.?

Fox is leaving no stone unturned to ensure that. Some 400 prints of the movie, says Singh of Fox, will be released in the domestic market. ?This includes both the English and Hindi versions,? he says. ?But the skew is towards the Hindi version. Our aim is to penetrate the last mile with this film, get into the smaller towns and cities, get as many people to view it.?

For a country of over billion people whose obsession remains Bollywood and cricket, the interest of the West and specifically that of Hollywood studios to tap into this market is growing by the day. ?Who would want to miss out on it?? asks Priti Sahani, senior vice-president, marketing, distribution and syndication, Indian Film Company, which is promoted by the TV 18 group and has had some big-ticket releases over the last two years including the Rs 200-crore grosser Ghajini, whose local distribution rights rest with the company. ?The market here is not saturated, ticket prices by Western standards are not steep, and, above all, there is a growing acceptance of the Bollywood way of telling a story,? she says. ?You?d be amazed how interested foreigners are in Bollywood actors these days,? says Adarsh. ?They look forward to their releases,? he says.

It?s not surprising to find foreigners today sitting with the locals to enjoy a Bollywood movie at the next-door multiplex.

If the foreign population can make it to a Bollywood film, so can their studios. Already many of them have taken their first tentative steps in that direction. Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE), for instance, co-produced Sanjay Leela Bhansali?s Saawariya in 2007. This year, the studio will release Straight and Tere Sung as a distributor. Its co-production with Percept Pictures, Raftaar, will also see the light of day this year, says Kercy Daruwala, managing director, SPE Films India.

Fox, on the other hand, is working at releasing some five to six movies per year, says Singh. ?Our two-movie deal with Vipul Shah is on. The films will release over this year and next. There are four other movies in various stages of production. They will release subsequently.?

Then there is Warner Brothers, which produced the Akshay Kumar-Deepika Padukone-starrer Chandni Chowk to China. More productions are said to be in the pipeline from the studio.

So is the case with Walt Disney Pictures, which marked its Bollywood foray with an animated film Roadside Romeo along with Yash Raj Films in October last year.

As the studios make a beeline for India, they are also lending a hand in the corporatisation of the business. Funding is becoming easier and the processes transparent. ?As the industry becomes global, this is a natural fallout,? says Khan of Sony Entertainment Television. ?It?s good if the business becomes transparent. That would attract more players and new business models too.?

If that happens, Bollywood will truly become a force to reckon with in the global entertainment space. Currently that position is occupied by Hollywood alone.

Can Brand India make the transition?

As they say, well begun is half done.

Hollywood comes to Bollywood

* Sony Pictures Entertainment-owned Columbia TriStar Motion Pictures was the first Hollywood studio to collaborate with an Indian production house, Sanjay Leela Bhansali Films, in 2007. The co-production Saawariya (2007) proved a box office dud

* Viacom-owned Paramount Pictures joined hands with Raghav Bahl’s TV 18 group to launch a movie investment fund in 2008

* Walt Disney Co threw its hat in the ring with a joint venture with Yash Raj Films and an investment of Rs 13 billion. Their maiden venture Roadside Romeo proved to be another box office turkey.

* Warner Bros ventured into Bollywood as distributors for Saas, Bahu Aur Sensex and has co-produced Akshay Kumar-starrer Chandni Chowk to China with Ramesh and Rohan Sippy. It has a three-movie deal with People Tree Films and a one film tie-up with Tandav Films. Indian filmmaker Shekhar Kapur is directing a $200-million Hollywood fantasy-epic Larklight for it.