Yes, but Gravity has earned over $218 million dollars so far so if they had made Gravity, they'd now have their money back plus another $200-$300 million dollars. Bollywood should make a few American films every year or so. Where's the Pixar of India?

A better argument might be that a country needs to develop other industries and gain certain expertises. There's no point in having all the IIT's, if people have to leave the country to use their abilities. Space, rocketry, satellites, etc are upmarket skills.

> Bollywood should make a few American films every year or so. Where's the Pixar of India?

What?

Indian cinema gross box office for 2011 was $1.1billion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_cinema

> India is the world's largest producer of films.[23][24] In 2009, India produced a total of 2961 films on celluloid, that include 1288 feature films.[25] The provision of 100% foreign direct investment has made the Indian film market attractive for foreign enterprises such as 20th Century Fox, Sony Pictures, Walt Disney Pictures[26][27] and Warner Bros..[28]

I think that you completely missed my point. I understand that India makes the most films. What I'm saying is that they should diversify into the American (or global) market and make another couple billion a year.

Animation is probably the logical place. It's not the quantity of films, but the quality.

Bollywood does makes some great movies, of course: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3_Idiots

Here's what Hollywood makes:

http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2012/how-much-does-hol...

It looks like they get around $10 billion US and $25-$30 billion internationally.

So, in the big scheme of things, a billion dollars is less than the Avengers made at the box office.

This kind of reasoning would lead to silly suggestions like that Apple should invade Microsoft's market and create OSX for non-Apple

Companies and Industries often don't compete with other ones when there's a significant enough barrier to do so (or not to do so). There's a huge and rapidly growing market in India, why would Bollywood look elsewhere without increasing it's take of it's own market?

I posit that Hollywood better look to Bollywood for it's growth potential - the middle-class in India is growing, while the US middle class is in decline.

Hollywood is already looking overseas. They get most of their profits from foreign ticket sales. They are even changing the way films are made to get into the Chinese market, for example. In short, they are thinking global.

Anyway, if Bollywood doesn't want to think global, I'm ok with that. Someone else will seize the opportunity.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230421390...

From what i understand, Bollywood is catering ever more to their own population as opposed to the global population. There really isn't any global market for super-human cops is there now? But movies like those are on the high rise in India. Its because that's the thing the indian people love. And with one of the largest populations in the world, they feel that there's no point in catering to the global market at the cost of the money gained from indian viewers.

Btw, in other threads people are debating whether it's a good idea to spend money on space research, and here we are telling them to spend money in movies instead? What gives?

I originally wrote 2 paragraphs. If you read them both, I also discussed the upside of space research.

1) a large number of big budget animation and non-animation movies that use large amounts of SFX actually get their animation work done in India nowadays.

2) the logic of your argument fails anyways - they proved to the world - that they can send a spaceship to mars - they already launch satellites for other countries - and make a shit ton of money on it - their people are learning to make spaceships that can go into deep space - an industry that if anything is also growing in the private sector - they did the whole thin for the cost of a few hundred javelin missiles that the US army has been using to kill arguably mostly civilians in Afghanistan (and dont tell me the US has money - you know the debt ceiling fight recently? That was the US agreeing to borrow more money). there is almost 0 wrong with this mission.

Bollywood is not directly making American films, but American films are definitely getting financed by Indian money [1]. The Reliance group (which makes movies in Bollywood) is also one of the big investors in Dreamworks.

http://www.dreamworksstudios.com/about/history

Earning profit on a film affects a small number of people now. Advancing the state of the art in technology affects many people for a very, very long time. It's tempting to say forever, but humanity won't last forever.

Finally, it's entirely possible to create sustainable industries in aerospace. It's just not an immediate turn around.

>>There's no point in having all the IIT's, if people have to leave the country to use their abilities.

Bulk of the IITians are busy preparing for interviews(stuffing algorithm books in their brains) at big web companies to ultimately write HTML pages. The ones left are preparing to do their MBA's at IIM's or at some foreign university. IIT's are all about brands stamps, and access to a world wide network of alumni that ensures you get fat paychecks.

Guy's at ISRO. Most of them are from small time colleges, and many with average marks and grades. Many probably don't even have an engineering degree, and probably have a diploma.

IIT's have contributed very little or almost nothing to India. Bulk of their students don't even work here. Modern India is the pretty the result of the sweat and blood of the ordinary college educated student.

>>Space, rocketry, satellites, etc are upmarket skills.

I hope more people realize this hard fact.

> Bulk of the IITians are busy preparing for interviews...

> IIT's have contributed very little or almost nothing to India.

I don't even know why I am biting but I guess someone has to point it out. I know it is fancy to sling mud on the IITian but last I checked (maybe a year ago), about 50% of my class went on to do higher studies. Out of that maybe half went on to obtain a PhD. A paltry 10% or so went into management. Others went for jobs...mostly in the product sector. Some did join service jobs but quit soon after and they went for a Masters too I think. About 5% of my class have started companies in India.

> Guy's at ISRO. Most of them are from small time colleges, and many with average marks and grades. Many probably don't even have an engineering degree, and probably have a diploma.

Just stop. Please. There are tiered requirements for Scientist categories. Pretty obvious if you check the newspaper ads.

> IIT's have contributed very little or almost nothing to India. Bulk of their students don't even work here. Modern India is the pretty the result of the sweat and blood of the ordinary college educated student.

Many have come back to join as faculty back in the IITs. You can pull up say IIT Elec department page and confirm yourself. A decade ago, it was our own faculty who encouraged us to step outside. Now, slowly, we are bringing in overseas culture within our own campuses.

* * *

But hey, you have already formed an opinion and composed an elegy. What I wrote above is not for you. It is for others to gather that you are factually incorrect.

>>A decade ago, it was our own faculty who encouraged us to step outside.

Correction. That's happening from decades, not just one decade. But besides that, you do agree most of your folks don't even work or stay here.

The Indian tax payer is subsidizing the IIT's for a reason. We need to pay for the education of people who stay here and contribute(In fact that was the whole point of IIT's).

Coming to IIT's, you guys are going to settle down abroad anyways and you will also get fat paychecks. Why should you need any kind of subsidy. I am sure most banks would be more than willing to lend a education loan.

I think what he meant to point out was that almost none of the IITians work in India or in Indian companies and nowhere in your reply did you refute that fact :)

I find this really offensive. This post compares Indian cinema to American as if America was the world standard even finance-wise (see other post showing that Indian industry grosses more annually).

The US film industry grosses roughly $10 billion annually in the domestic market alone.

Science has trickle down effects in terms of know how filtering into industry to solve real world problems.

Maybe you should read this : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antrix_Corporation

I agree with your premise, but a possibly better example would be the 2011 movie "Mars Needs Mums". [1] "The film was a commercial failure, and is the biggest box office bomb in history, grossing only about $39 million on a budget of $150 million."

It's also, coincidentally a Mars reference :-)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Needs_Moms

Not a fair comparison. They spent $100MM on a movie knowing that they will net $X00MM in profits.

Could you explain how or why this is unfair? I don't think the OP was suggesting that Gravity's expenditure was therefore not worthwhile. If anything, your comment adds further weight to the comparison by illustrating the scale of a major motion picture in terms of expenditure and profit.

Science cannot be bought in the store, you don't have a market of people willing to pay you back. Its not constantly craved by humans unlike entertainment. And it is not limited to general rules of business, specially when we are going beyond our abilities, and stretching them even further.

For example, ISRO have never had a engine before that could re-ignite after a 300 days period of cryogenic conditions of space. That technology developed in extreme conditions can be reverse engineered to make our cars perform better in winters. Or some other applications. Does that sort of returns even get reported ever?

yes - and so will ISRO - with its private company Antrix - its already making money launching spaceships for telecoms companies and other non-spacefaring nations. the mars mission if you will - is just a slightly more expensive Marketing move - showing clients what they can do. So its a very fair comparison!

Don't be silly. Hollywood's movies are never profitable - if you check their accounting books at least.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting

The price of a cup of coffee(for everyone in the US) would be around 600 million :)

So it's less than the price of a cup of coffee really.

I like these kinds of perspectives :)

Wow