When it comes to cinema, the Chinese have a complex way of arriving at closure: it is not enough for good to simply conquer evil; the bad guy should also accept his mistake before meeting certain death. The Chinese also love it when female characters, powerful yet elegant, save the day. However, the communist nation is not very fond of same-sex themes, just as it is disinclined towards stories involving spirits or ghosts or time travel. Jana Gana Mana (2022), a courtroom drama, fits the bill. Before you wonder how the low-key Mollywood thriller made its way to dragon land, there is more.
In South America, people prefer survival stories that pit humans against nature’s fury, which strikes at the core of their lived reality. No wonder, 2018, India’s official Oscar entry in 2024, was loved by audiences in Bolivia, Argentina, Paraguay and Colombia. It will soon be playing across 400 screens in South America, with releases in Ecuador, Peru, Brazil and Chile in the near future.
Uyare (2019), Devara: Part 1 and Ayalaan (both 2024) may have little recall value outside their states of origin, but outside India, these films have found a loyal audience. Uyare’s heart-warming story of an acid attack survivor reclaiming the ruins of her dreams to pilot an aircraft found a connect with filmgoers in South Korea. The Portuguese watched Jr NTR’s action extravaganza in Devara across 100 screens—the first time an Indian movie went beyond the two screens that would usually rely on the Indian diaspora to fill up the seats. Cambodians marvelled at a dashing youth from Kodaikanal and an alien becoming friends in Ayalaan—the first south Indian film to be released in the country.
The credit for all these firsts goes to Shyam Kurup, director of Indywood Distribution Network (IDN), a Kochi-based film distribution and sales company. He picked up these country-specific nuances while flitting from one international film festival to another. Russians, for instance, love animal tales, while the Japanese have a thing for fantasy flicks. So, he decided to give them Mollywood’s Valatty (2023) and Malaikottai Vaaliban (2024) respectively.
Vikram, meanwhile, collected Rs50 lakh in three days of its release in Japan this year.
“You will not find these things documented anywhere,” says Kurup, 45. “You have to go, try and find out on your own.” That pretty much sums up IDN’s business. IDN, set up in 2019, aims to be the bridge between regional Indian cinema and the global market, which has no clue about the existence of many smaller ‘woods’ around the behemoth that is Bollywood. “Melodramas or rom-coms that run for many hours with dance numbers and songs—this is the stereotype about Indian movies in many parts of the world,” says Kurup. “They think Bollywood is our only industry.” Hence ‘Indywood’—Kurup wanted a name that would represent every film industry in India, and not just Bollywood.
Kurup will next screen Marco (2024), often rated as the goriest Indian movie of all time, in South Korea. It will be interesting to see how South Koreans, no strangers to gore and violence thanks to films by homegrown masters like Kim Jee-woon, Kim Ki-duk and Park Chan-wook, will take to the Malayalam film. Marco is also being released in Taiwan and Europe.
But finding the right regional film for a foreign release is easier said than done.
The art of film marketing
Kurup, a regular at the Hong Kong, Cannes and Berlin film festivals, points to a phenomenon called ‘film markets’, which serve not only as spaces for exhibitions but also business opportunities. It is here he realised the disparity in how Indian movies were projected globally and how smaller countries like Japan and South Korea were projecting theirs, he says. Particularly in Seoul, the production costs are so high that producers, big or small, cannot profit from domestic release alone. They need a worldwide release to make profits, and they make the most of such film markets.
But who are the people you meet at these markets? Film distributors, says Kurup, with an eye for fresh content to sell at home for profit. “They are experts who know their country’s audience and their needs well. You cannot meet them online but at international conferences, film festivals and other events,” says Kurup, who claims to have attended more than 100 such events in the past 15 years. Indian movies hardly make it to these markets. “One obvious reason is ignorance, while another could be that we are settling for lesser goals,” says Kurup. “Tamil movies are happy with what they are doing in Tamil Nadu, Mollywood is happy with their returns from Kerala…. The most they dream of is ‘pan-India’ success and earning a few screens in the UK and the Middle East, hoping the NRI crowd to show up.”
Pic and choose
Uyare found a connect with South Koreans
It is a subtle art though. Even if you narrow down a genre that is sure to pull crowds in a country, there is no guarantee that the film you choose to release will work. And if you get the first release wrong, the distributor may not show interest in another flick from your country. So, one needs to be careful with each pick.
But there are a few no-go criteria for the international distribution community—sentimental drama is not appreciated by most, and films should be ideally 120 minutes long. “The hero’s star value doesn’t count in the international market,” says Kurup. “Neither do the songs. If the movie is too long or has any of the factors that may repel the distributors, we trim it accordingly.”
IMDb ratings, however, matter. Many countries take them seriously, so much so that South Korea will not consider any foreign project with a rating below 5, and China below 7.5. Only action films escape this rule in some countries, often passing with ratings as low as 2 or 3 when distributors are sold on the stunt choreography. Kannada thriller Martin (2024) was one such exception for Russia and Latin America.
The how and why
It is not just about what people want to see but also how they want to see it. While some communities like to experience a foreign movie in its original form with subtitles, others prefer localisation. This includes trimming and dubbing. South Korea, Taiwan, China and Japan belong to the first bracket, while Spain, France, Germany and South America fall into the latter. IDN manages the subtitling, adding local flair and flavour, so that distributors have nothing to worry about.
The same goes for promotion. It adapts to each country’s needs, often going to unheard-of lengths. For instance, it facilitated a Japanese crew’s trip to Tamil Nadu to shoot a promotional teaser ahead of Kamal Haasan’s Vikram (2022) in Japan. When Maaveeran (2023), another Tamil film, was released, it convinced restaurants in Tokyo to come up with a dish named after the movie.
But how does the whole process begin, right from film acquisition to release? “If you know that a movie is going to work, you go to the director and producer before the film’s release for the rights,” says Kurup. “You also try to make the movie available at festivals so that distributors get a chance to preview it and get impressed.”
But if the movie has already been released, things get complicated as the rights will most likely have been sold to an OTT platform or a television partner. Movie rights abroad are sold to different players in different countries; for instance, Netflix Korea will have OTT rights to a movie only in Korea. “Here, we have to collect TV rights, digital rights and theatre rights separately,” rues Kurup. “Perhaps that is also a reason our films don’t travel. I have lost a lot of important movies just because of this issue. Sometimes the company with the rights may not be willing to share them.”
The issue is also platform-dependent. If the rights of a movie are sold to an Indian OTT, they will not mind the release elsewhere as they have no market there. But if a big player like Netflix or Amazon Prime is involved, they will not appreciate it, as they can stream it all over the world. Also, when an OTT platform can let people from anywhere in the world stream it, why have a theatrical release in a foreign country? Kurup has an answer. Uyare’s OTT rights are with Amazon Prime. While Keralites all over the world may binge it, Koreans, Indonesians and Nigerians will never even spot it on the platform. What are the odds of foreigners stumbling across a random Indian movie, he asks. Unless the movie gets international attention, it can still have a theatrical release years later, as long as the audience is fresh, says Kurup.
Since high returns cannot be expected every time, IDN takes all the risks. “I will pay the producer a one-time amount to buy the rights. Then, the onus of making a profit falls on me,” explains Kurup.
Sadly, Devara did not make the expected impact in Portugal. Had it done so, IDN would not have shelved the plan to introduce another 10 to 12 movies in the country, including Mohanlal’s directorial Barroz 3D (2024), which had a Portuguese link. But IDN learnt from its mistakes and bounced back in style. When Vikram released in Japan this year, it collected Rs50 lakh in three days. “Sometimes we end up losing money, but that is alright—it is part of the game,” says Kurup. “But as a business model, Indywood can definitely survive.”
Bring on the competition
But how does IDN profit? “If we can sell a movie to a good number of countries, we will take 20 per cent of the sum generated,” says Kurup. The returns vary depending on the size of the countries. When the Tamil flick Maharaja (2024) released in China, it collected Rs91.55 crore mainly because of the sheer number of theatres in the country. You cannot expect the same after a movie’s success in Cambodia or Mongolia, adds Kurup. “Populous countries like Russia can fetch you anything between Rs30 lakh and Rs75 lakh. It can only be Rs10 lakh or Rs15 lakh from Germany, Spain or France,” he says. “Many regional industries, however, deliver strong content on budgets capped at Rs10 crore—and those amounts matter to their creators.”
This could also be the reason why there are not many Bollywood movies on IDN’s list. They are produced on larger budgets, and the revenue model is negligible for them. But there is no bias against Bollywood, clarifies Kurup, calling Aamir Khan and Shah Rukh Khan the absolute ambassadors of Indian cinema in China, Japan and even Central Asia.
IDN is now eyeing Marathi and Bengali films. It is also on the lookout for an effective AI dubbing tool. Kurup hopes IDN will soon cease to be the only player in the market, as healthy competition will only benefit Indian cinema. “We just wanted to open boundaries, be the torch-bearers, and we are content with that,” says Kurup. “We hope others come forward now.”
Indywood Distribution Network can be reached at distribution@indywood.co.in