Requests about Bollywood films.

A couple of the comments lately have been requests for Bollywood (Indian ) films.

Any time in the last couple years Western Film has played a Bollywood film it's actually been someone renting the theatre to show the film and I've just been helping advertise it. There's been three groups try it in the last couple years.

The last group tried charging lower ticket prices in hopes of getting more people. They were also selling their own advertising on the tickets and their own slide show. The lower price worked and they had good turnout but they made a lot less per person than previous groups. I haven't heard from them for a couple months so I'm assuming they don't want to do it any more, or possibly are going to wait for just big hits. I think it was a lot of work on their part to try to market it.

I tried doing Bollywood films myself once but not being part of the Indian community I found I couldn't advertise them effectively.

Part of the problem is we have to wait for a couple weeks after release to play them. The 35mm film prints have to finish playing in Toronto before we can show them. During that time a lot of people have already watched pirated copies. It might be worth trying again in a few years when the conversion to Digital Cinema has occurred. Presumably we would be able to play a film when it's released everywhere else and not have to wait for an expensive 35mm film copy to be available.

Basically it boils down to rampant piracy of Bollywood films and people willing to watch them rather than support the producers of the film or the theatres that try to show them.