BollywoodFAQ_galley

Introduction
The Greatest Film Story
Never Told
Bollywood, a popular nomenclature for India’s “national” film industry
in the Hindi language, is—along with the Taj Mahal, Yoga, Buddha, and
Mahatma Gandhi—one of the best-known introductions and universally recognized
associations with India across the world today. Despite its predominant
narrative styles not conforming to the First World European and/or American
cinema narrative structure, Indian cinema is acknowledged as highly influential.
Its twenty-first century avatar is increasingly acknowledged as the world’s
second-most important and influential film industry, after Hollywood.
Bollywood FAQ provides a thrilling, entertaining, and informative joy
ride into the vibrant, colorful, and multi-emotional universe of the world’s
most prolific—and most watched—film industry, boasting a cumulative output
of more than fifty thousand films since its modest, early twentieth century
beginnings.
Outside of India, Bollywood films are simultaneously screened in theaters
in over a hundred nations, from the United States to Japan, New Zealand, and
the Netherlands, with an increasing distribution presence in the dubbed film
circuits of Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. A rise in its viewership among
local audiences in hitherto-unknown destinations—like Peru or Siberia—has
also been noted. It is no wonder that the popularity barometer of one of its
biggest twenty-first century superstars, global culture icon Shah Rukh Khan,
declares: “Three billion-plus people in the world, or roughly three times the
population of India, and literally one in every second person in the world,
recognizes Shah Rukh Khan!”
India has been the largest movie-making nation in the world for over
three decades. Today, every major Hollywood studio (Warner Bros., Fox Star,
Disney, Sony Pictures, and Viacom 18) since Sony Pictures’ 2007 debut with
Saawariya (The Lover), is either making or distributing films in the Hindi
language, with more than an office presence in Bombay (now Mumbai), the
epicenter of India’s national language cinema in Hindi. Indian film production
companies, such as Reliance Big Pictures, are co-producing Hollywood