Mumbai: James Bond, eat your heart out – Bollywood is spending big bucks to revamp its technologically uncool image and is hiring acclaimed special effects experts in a bid for bigger box office sales.
The booming film industry is the world's most prolific but it has often lagged behind Hollywood – and even Asian neighbours Japan and China – in the use of technology.
Until recently, a Bollywood action movie meant a collage of fight sequences in which punches rarely landed and kicks missed their targets by yards.
Now, actors are jumping off planes, scuffling for parachutes mid-air or speeding their cars under moving trucks in scenes straight out of big-budget Hollywood thrillers.
"Things had to change. People are exposed to Western cinema and they now compare. It's about the quality of production now, not just star power," director Vipul Shah says.
"Audiences aren't fools. The benchmark keeps going up and so do their expectations from Bollywood," trade analyst and critic, Taran Adarsh says.
The Big Game
Filmmakers say the change started in the late 1990s with the advent of multi-screen cinema theatres, which exposed audiences to more offerings from Hollywood.
The results has been a slow but clear transformation in Bollywood, traditionally known for its mushy romances, song-and-dance dramas and flaky revenge potboilers.
This year, blockbuster Krrish, Bollywood's first superhero movie, saw the main character leap across skyscrapers in stunts reminiscent of Keanu Reeves in the film Matrix and which were designed by Hong Kong martial arts film specialist Tony Ching.
Director Farhan Akhtar also hired Australian stunt expert Angelo Sahin and acclaimed US skydiving cameraman Joe Jennings of Charlie's Angels fame to work on Don.
The trend appears to have caught on – at least a dozen forthcoming big-budget films, including Namaste London and Dhoom 2 – are also using foreign crews.
Dhoom 2, which is shot in Brazil, hired British make-up specialist Mike Bates of Lord of the Rings fame to give its actors an international look.
"The costs have sky-rocketted. But audiences are tech-savvy and they want quality," Rakesh Roshan says.
The costs might be high but these slicker movies have set the cash registers ringing, industry experts say. "Films like Krrish invested in technology and the returns have been very handsome," Adarsh says.
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