The Possibilities and Problems Of Cinematic Universes In Indian Film Industry: Can It Be Next Big Revival Idea For Beleaguered Bollywood

Over the last few years, Indian production houses have been spending hundreds of crores on movies to create universes. 

The recently launched Pathaan is a part of the YRF Spy Universe. Other universes include the Lokesh Universe, Astraverse, Rohit Shetty’s cop universe, and Bahubali Universe. 

The Bahubali universe has fictional books and series by both Amazon and Netflix. While Bollywood sequels usually have the same cast, cinematic universes have overlapping storylines and different protagonists.

The Advantages of Building a Universe

Bollywood has clearly learnt the universe-building strategy from Hollywood, where some of the most successful films are part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), the DC Universe (DCU), the Star Wars Universe etc. These have grossed tens of billions of dollars globally and continue to make money through merchandise sales, sales of rights and other means.

One of the most obvious reasons for creating universes stems from the ability of the studio to create multiple movies with interconnected storylines with multiple protagonists. Since each movie often uses stories from a previous movie, it becomes necessary for viewers to know the plot. As a result, viewers are often required to watch the existing movies and spin-offs to grasp the current storyline. 

Marvel has managed to produce appealing movies in general and has had little trouble getting viewers for new movies or spin-offs.

The Star Wars Universe, though less successful and with its continuity troubles, has had a similar strategy. In contrast, one of the reasons for the relatively smaller commercial success of DC films could be the fact that there aren’t any intricate inter-woven movies in its cinematic universe that appeal to audiences and forces them to watch every movie or spin-off, lest they miss out on some detail.  

In the Indian cinema industry, fees to stars often make up a bulk of production value, unlike in Hollywood, where stars are a much smaller portion of production budgets. 

In India’s market, where stars have commanded mass popularity, cameos in the universe movies can make the movies attractive to audiences. These cameos have been used several times in these universes to make them appealing and to introduce audiences to the fact that the movies are a part of the same universe.

The Problems with Cinematic Universes

While cinematic universes can be commercially rewarding when created correctly, the strengths might also become a weakness after a certain point. For instance, the issue of “franchise fatigue” has been discussed by movie experts. Continually throwing similar movies at movie-goers, might not appeal to them beyond a certain point. Both MCU and DCU are filled with similar movies that can become boring for audiences after a while.

Secondly, if the movie universe is so tightly knit that one has to watch every movie to understand the next movie, it acts as a disincentive for new watchers to begin watching the films and for fans who might have missed out on a certain movie or spin-off. 

Marvel, for instance, has seen fans complaining about the multiple spin-offs that connect back with movies, making it a task to watch a new movie. 

Creating a universe also means that the failure of one movie can affect the rest of the universe’s releases. From the bigger picture point of view, allocating resources towards cinematic universe movies that are pretty similar to each other means that new projects do not get funded. As a result, audiences are fed similar stuff every time.

Overall, cinematic universes can be an interesting and commercially rewarding endeavour for the Indian film industry. But, so far, most of these universes are full of similar movies with similar plots and action scenes. Unlike Marvel, they do not have any significantly interconnected storylines yet. 

The cinematic universe concept could allow the Indian film industry to create multi-starrer movies, whose numbers have dwindled over the years. There are several possibilities, and studios shouldn’t squander them away bt limiting “universes” to surprise cameos.