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Shahrukh Khan, Amitabh Bachchan, Nagarjuna: These Bollywood film stars have yet to grace the cover of Us Weekly, but they command a worldwide audience of more than 3 billion and dominate a film industry whose output dwarfs that of Hollywood.
Bollywood stars are far from household names here, yet signs of the Mumbai, India–based industry’s growing stateside boom can be found in an unlikely place: the West Suburbs. Within a recess of a sprawling, nondescript strip mall in Bloomingdale is the Bloomingdale Court Theater, which recently started showing blockbusters from India alongside mainstream Hollywood fare.
Since November, when the theater was purchased by Texas-based FunAsiA, baggy-panted suburban teens in search of the latest big-budget fodder like National Treasure have crowded the concession stand alongside a smartly dressed South Asian set with tickets for films such as Don, a remake of the classic 1978 Bollywood action movie. Appropriately, the snack counter sells samosas and the Indian soft drink Thums Up beside oversize popcorn and Cokes.
“Honestly, we were looking for an investment with a quick return,” concedes John Hamid, CFO of FunAsiA, which owns five Indian-language cinemas in the Dallas and Houston areas, as well as one in Maryland. “But we also realized that after 9/11, everybody was homesick and worried, and that this could be a good place for people to meet and leave their worries behind.”
Moviegoer Mike Patel, who owns an Indian grocery store near the theater, says that for him, the real draw is the films’ colorful content. “I love the variety—you get action, family drama, love stories, everything all in one.” Fans also get a lot of show for their dough: The average Bollywood film clocks in at three hours, plus intermission, and is usually packed with elaborate song-and-dance numbers.
Hamid and his brother Shariq, FunAsiA’s CIO, hope the theater eventually will become the epicenter of Indian cinema in Chicagoland. “We chose Bloomingdale because it’s convenient to Elgin and Schaumburg and other places where the majority of the community lives,” John says. The brothers seem to have made a wise choice: In the past decade, DuPage County, which includes Bloomingdale, saw its Asian population nearly double. (For several years now, nearby theaters in Warrenville and Lombard have presented limited screenings of Bollywood films.)
The all-star Bollywood movie Om Shanti Om is probably the most telling harbinger of the market’s increasing popularity. The film, which was one of the Bloomingdale theater’s first Hindi-language features, broke U.S. box-office records for a Bollywood movie as it raked in more than $1.7 million during its first three days. By the end of opening week, it was the world’s No. 1 grosser. (Why haven’t Indian film fans in the U.S. turned to DVDs the way most other niche movie fans have? “It’s part of South Asian culture to get dressed up and go to the movies with the whole family,” John says.)
The Hamid brothers’ Desi, or South Asian, empire won’t end with the Bloomingdale theater. FunAsiA also will launch a Bollywood-focused Chicago radio station and a local version of its free magazine, which features news, celebrity gossip and interviews with the industry’s stars—like a Bollywood Us Weekly.
