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Bollywood broken? Movie moguls' spell over India fades
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In this picture taken on July 21, 2020, a wall mural with images of Bollywood actors, is seen under a road bridge in Mumbai. (AFP/Sujit Jaiswal)
Bollywood may be broken, and it has itself to blame.
That's the verdict of one of its biggest and brightest stars after the latest flop in a Hindi-language movie industry that's long mesmerised Indians, and the world, with its dazzling all-singing, all-dancing brand of big-screen escapism.
"Films are not working - it's our fault, it's my fault," Akshay Kumar told reporters last month after his new movie "Raksha Bandhan" tanked at the box office. "I have to make the changes, I have to understand what the audience wants. I want to dismantle the way I think about what kind of films I should do."
Indeed times have changed and Bollywood, a cultural pillar of modern India, is losing its allure.
The rise of streaming services like Netflix NFLX.O and Amazon Prime AMZN.O during the COVID pandemic has conspired with growing Bollywood fatigue among younger generations who view many of its movies as outdated and unfashionable.
Of the 26 Bollywood releases this year, 20 - or 77% - have been flops, defined as losing half or more of their investment, according to the Koimoi website, which tracks industry data.
That's about double the failure rate of 39% in 2019, before the pandemic shook up society and forced hundreds of millions of Indians to wean themselves off cinemas, for decades the bastion of Bollywood and its main source of revenue.
