Bollywood Comes to Cornfield County

A while back, Manish at Ultrabrown compared the gross of the three worldwide releases Lions for Lambs, Om Shanti Om, and Saawariya, and asked why the latter two films, both backed by big-budget advertising, only earned a little more (combined) than the Hollywood indie flick.

I left a comment arguing that it could be because Lions for Lambs played on every theater in Small Town USA, while Bollywood was limited to only a handful of major US cities. Multiply that by the (falling) US dollar, and... well, that might account for the divergent US gross.

But what did I see today, as I drove in to the office on a freezing Monday morning? A giant advertisement announcing Saawariya at my local theater! I was busy texting away in a flurry of "OMG!"s, and have arranged a party to go see it later this week.

Then -- lo and behold -- I did a little research, and found out that Om Shanti Om had also played in my hometown, during Thanksgiving week.

We' have a very large desi population, where I live (we're the town with its own Bollywood cover band, after all), but this has to be symptomatic of a larger trend.

Hooray for Bollywood!