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Ravi Kishan, Voice of Spidey |
Though Hollywood films currently only take a modest slice of the Indian film market, Hollywood studios are working harder than ever to “colonize” Indian film audiences. The latest strategy is to move past Hindi dubbing — and release films dubbed in regional languages as well as Hindi.
This is the fruition of a long process of evolution, beginning with the “unofficial” dubs back in the day. Then, as more Hollywood films were being released in India, blockbuster films started getting officially dubbed — the peak of which might have been last year’s hugely successful Hindi version of Night at the Museum (Museum Ke Andar Phans Gaya Sikander, which is actually much catchier than the non-rhyming western title). And the Hindi release of The Incredibles also made waves a couple of years ago, when it was announced that the “dad” character’s voice was going to be dubbed by Shah Rukh Khan.
Now, Spiderman 3 is getting the official dubbing treatment — in Bhojpuri. The Bhojpuri film industry is the fastest growing segment of India’s different, language-based film markets. Last year, 76 Bhojpuri films were released, which is still less than other languages (245 Telugu films; 225 Hindi films), but with a captive audience of 100 million+ Bhojpuri speakers in UP and Bihar, the fan base is vast.
Here Spidey’s voice is being dubbed by Ravi Kishan (pictured right), a “Bhojywood” superstar responsible for hits like Panditji Batayie Mera Byah Kab Hoi. The budget for the dubbing alone was $250,000 (Rs. 1 Crore), which is about three times the entire budget for a regular Bhojpuri film, and Ravi Kishan says he spent 12 days doing it (on his normal films, he normally does all vocal dubbing in a single day).
Kishan seems to have a sense of humor about his dubbing work:
“No, this isn’t a nightmare. I’m dubbing for ‘Spiderman’ in Bhojpuri.”
The last such film from Hollywood to be dubbed in India by a star was “The Incredibles” in which Shah Rukh Khan gave voice to the main character.
“Well they don’t call me the Shah Rukh of Bhojpuri cinema for nothing. I’m doing this because I wanted my Bhojpuri fans to enjoy ‘Spiderman’ in the voice that they love – mine!
“Wait till they hear me saying ‘Hum makad manav hain, ud kar aayab aur tohar tetuwa dabaa deb’ (I’m Spiderman, I’ll fly to you and throttle you).” (link)
Well, at least he’s not shy about it.
Already saw it. Not worth dubbing in Telegu or any other language.
“Hum makad manav hain, ud kar aayab aur tohar tetuwa dabaa deb”
Where is the translation of spider-man in this?
HMF, not sure I understand your question — the translation for the Bhojpuri dialogue is in parentheses above: “I’m Spiderman, I’ll fly to you and throttle you.”
I was watching StarNews briefly last night, and they were interviewing local people in UP about the Bhojpuri version — everyone was thrilled (whistles, catcalls, lost of “enthu”).
Then they cut to Bombay, where they had a bunch of chubby, English-speaking teenagers, all of whom were like “eh, whatever, it’s not as good as the first two.”
Makad-manav = Spider man, literally.
“Tohar tetuwa dabar de” just cracks me up.
HMF – Makad Manav is Spider-man. Makdi is spider, manav is man.
No surprise there, there is a reason why the utterly unbelievable and badly made though action packed movies by Mithun had such a large fan base in rural hindi speaking India. Mithuns movies were cinematically crap and quite low budget but made profits at a very high success rate. Similarly, the antics of Rajnikanth and Vijaykanth (Captain) are very appreciated in rural TN. Ditto for Chiranjeevi in Andhra. Such movies appeal to the rural masses who do make a big chunk in terms of number of people, especially when you include UP and Bihar. Thus dubbing it in Bhojpuri is in fact a great business idea.
Has anyone seen the unofficially dubbed Punjabi versions of movies like the Underworld on you tube, very very funny – one dude is dubbing for most of the characters including male and female. Lot of Punjabi gaali galoch too.
You are right about captain, not about Rajnikanth. Rajnikanth did some antics only when he did hindi movies, not in tamil. Rajni has a big fan base among the highly “educated” people also. Just to put it in perspective he is getting around 30 crores(add all the bollywood superstars salary) for his latest movie which is releasing next week. While captain’s movies run only in villages.
Ardy, I haven’t seen the Punjabi version of Underworld, but the Punjabi version of Spiderman I is pretty entertaining. There are lots side jokes inserted there that I have to admit I’m not getting.
[quote] which is still less than other languages (245 Telugu films; 225 Hindi films) [/quote]
245 number seems to be pretty high even if it includes dubbed movies from other languages. Amardeep, could you give pointer to ur source, just curious. Thanks.
It’s sad really, that franchise is going down the path the Batman franchise went (before its resurrection with Batman Begins) – sacrificing character for special effects.
Rajnikanth did some antics only when he did hindi movies, not in tamil
Oh, c’mon. “Superstar” perfected that whole cigarette toss and marching up really quickly to the camera routine in Tamil movies from the 80s. People would swear that it just wasn’t a Rajni movie until he did all his “moves.”
I agree, Rajni is loved by masses and classes all over South India, in fact his movies are equally successful in Andhra, In some cases they collect more than Tamilland.
Talking about Bhojpuri, I heard even Big B did a movie in Bhojpuri to reach out to masses in Hindi heartland.
Yay! go Bhojpur!! really? i don’t know how to react to this post.
Vamsi, it’s in the Hindustan Times article I linked to in the post. According to them, last year there were more films produced in Telugu than in any other Indian language (followed by Hindi and then Tamil). It was also a record year for the Indian film industry in general.
Amardeep – yeah, getting those side jokes especially when they use pindi Punjabi are quite difficult unless one is fluent in colloquial Punjabi (which I am not since the Punjabi my family uses is more of Hindi with a Punjabi accent and some thet words thrown in)
I think I gave the impresssion that I am suggesting Rajni (or for that matter Chiru) is not popular in urban and educated TN which is not at all true. His movie Bhasha is considered a classic. However, at least some of his movies do have what can only be called a rural focus – the last one I saw, Chandramukhi was it, had a song where the skies got colored and the word ‘Thaliavar (leader)’ being written in the sky without having any relation to the rest of the movie. Plus his dialogs are again at times very mass appealesque.
The source you are asking is there, just click “76 Bhojpuri films were released” link
Lives with his old auntie, always gets hurt, walks around with this guilt of not bieng something more and he sewed his own costume.
Who wants to argue Spidey’s not guju???
Btw, Rajni is huge in Japan. So much for my theories of rural appeal, lol.
Btw, Rajni is huge in Japan. So much for my theories of rural appeal, lol.
I believe “Muthu” ran as “Dancing Indian Maharaja” or something of that sort in Japan, and they just ate it up.
Indian movies in general are superficial and its all about looks , yet almost all top stars are not good looking. Consider SRK, Big B, Chiru, Rajni, Mohanlal. Average looking guys, yet they ooze charisma. How ever crappy their movies are, you cannot ignore them while they are on screen. May be that’s what they call “screen presence”.
From the Hindu, courtesy wikipedia : Tamil superstar Rajnikanth’s blockbuster Odoru Maharaj (The Dancing Maharaja) came in for a special mention as Dr. Singh addressed Japanese lawmakers. Superstar Rajnikanth, what’s not to love?
“How ever crappy their movies are, you cannot ignore them while they are on screen”
Thanks Amar and Indianoguy for the pointer.
Unless our beloved Gurbir singh included all the couples_caught_on_cam clips from Andhra in debonairblog LMAO …sorry couldn’t help it.BTW Gurbir, they are not movies… LOL
I googled telugu films in 2006 —
List of telugu movies in wiki in 2006: The number came out to be 59. There is a chance that the list may not be complete but still its way off 243. Tollywood on wiki:”Currently, about 243 Telugu movies are released every year with approximately 3 releases every week…” Even the math is wrong LOL 2006: A year of hits and misses in South: It doesn’t give the number for Tollywood, but it says 98 films were released in Tamil in 2006 as opposed to 162 from HindustanTimes.
I don’t think I will even believe Bhojpuri numbers now. Could someone have right numbers or its just part of mango journalism with alphonso integrity.
PS: BTW, Banganapalli Mangoes rule!!! 🙂
What in the blue blazes is Tollywood?
Tollywood = Telegu movies
Kollywood = Tamil movies (because all the studios used to be in a place called Kodambakkam back in the day).
Yes. But that is not considered “antics”. The cigarette toss has nothing unbelievable about it.
Er, that should be “Telugu” in #23.
Jesus Christ of Latter-day saints the mormons, are you serious?
HMF:
I’m almost never serious, but in this case, yes.
One way to sell the Bollywood brand outside of India would be to produce Bollywood/[?]ollywood movies with a feudal, medieval setting, the standard ‘raja rani kadhai’ that was responsible for the success of Hindi and Tamil movies in the first place. Chinese movies like “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” are totally capitalizing on this fascination with ancien regime settings.
That is true..But nobody has enough money to produce that kind of stuff. It is a big gamble. There is Kamal’s Maruthanayakam in production for like 20 years now. It has great visuals and story and has been bogged down by money. And also our politicians won’t let any movie with main theme about untouchability and discrimination come out.
Vamsi (#21), the Publicity Information Bureau (PIB) of India has the same numbers (245 Telugu films etc), at an official Indian government website. I would tend to trust the Indian govt. slightly more than Wikipedia on this, since it’s the government that officially certifies films.
It’s possible that the CBFC certified a number of films that weren’t officially released — which might be why fans don’t have names to put on the Wikipedia list. Or perhaps some of the films certified in 06 were officially released this year…?
I tried going to the CBFC (the numbers are based on the number of CBFC certificates issued) to get further confirmation, but they don’t appear to have updated their website since about 2003.
The guys who dub these movies in Hindi always come up with interesting (And at times rhyming) titles
“Dunston Checks in” was “Ek Bandar Hotel ke Andar”.
“Poseidon” – Tsunami Ka Kaher
“Baby’s day out” – Ek baby teen badmaash
Amardeep: That punjabi video was hilarious (from what little I understood).
Before the movie (Spiderman-3) started last night, there was a video of a Japanese Spiderman movie. Spidey doesn’t weave a web but thick ropes. He owns a giant robot (like the tv show I watched during grade school in India) and fights a Teenage-Mutant-Ninja-Turtle-looking robot operated by a girl in strapless bodysuit. It was hilarious.
“Dude where is my car” – Ek Gaadi Do Anadi
I’m not kidding!
Johnny Sokko and his flying robot ?
brown_fob: I think that was the show, I was too young to remember the name.
Sam, nobody has enough money to produce that kind of stuff. It is a big gamble. Run-of-the-mill escapist movies, you know, the usual masala movies, are already being made. They have to make sure that the movie tells a good story, which many of them don’t. If the movies are at least somewhat close to the older Hollywood swashbucklers — and I am talking movies of the 50’s — in story-telling and production quality, they may have more of a chance than they do now.
Thanks for the link. I hadn’t heard of Maruthanayakam. Here is another link.
Amardeep, The movie title is, no doubt, inspired by “Ek Bandar Hotel ke Andar” (the Hindi version of “Dunston Checks In”).
So, i will go and see Ta Ra Rum Pum then, ok. Need me some de-stressing.
Make that : “The Hindi movie title for “Night at the Museum” is, no doubt, […]”
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Maybe some movies don’t get visibility or get released even though they are certified… That makes sense now. Hey Amardeep, thanks again for the pointer and some clarification. I am a ahem Mutineer now. 🙂
Peeps, some songs from a hit movie in 2006 on youtube – really good – check it out Bommarillu – bommani Bommarillu – nammaka Bommarillu – We have a romeo Super – To Gurbir with apologies
PS: Alphonsos are not bad. :p
the punjabi version is too funny… even the dialogue that is not meant to be funny turns out be so.
There was at least another Japanese series on during the early days of Doordarshan (around 1984-86) called Giant Robot I think. I had these really giant robots as the name suggests. I grew up remembering it as an awesome show, but then a few years back I caught a rerun of it on TV and it was just plain bad.
“Ardy, I haven’t seen the Punjabi version of Underworld, but the Punjabi version of Spiderman I is pretty entertaining. There are lots side jokes inserted there that I have to admit I’m not getting.”
Add there’s a Punjabi version of Devdas, or at least clips thereof (the new one, SRK +Aish/Madhuri) which is side-splittingly funny.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoiwxx6GDV0
is one of them.
Were the STAR WARS movie dubbed in India — and if so, what did Darth Vader’s voice sound like?? :-S
Atlast my peeps can enjoy good quality hollywood trash in their own god’s given language, Jai Raja Bhoj and jai Ram ji ki!
Bhojpuri is probably one of the more ‘alive and kicking’ dialects of Hindi at this time. Hindi dialects in general, like Marwari, Braj, Awadhi, Bundeli, Haryanvi, etc. are gradually declining and being replaced by mainstream Hindi. Of course they are all still widely spoken in hardcore rural areas, kept alive by poverty, lack of schools, and lack of outside media. Many are very beautiful and have a large poetic tradition. Thanks for posting about this, Amardeep.
Am I the only person, who think’s the Spiderman movies are pure crap? I am not going to see this one because the 1st two were chessy and the special effect’s were cartoonish to the point to the point of it being funny. Plus I heard that the characters do nothing but cry through out the whole movie so that automatically will annoy me to the point of me rooting against them.
Globalization at its best! Now EVERYONE can have an opinion about spidey 🙂
Man..that Ravi Kishan looks angry in that pic! He means business.
The first two were great. The first one, well, just because Peter Parker wasn’t your archetypal hero, and only had one villian to deal with, the second because it showed the humanity and vulnerability of so called “superheros”. They do rely much to heavily on special effects, especially this last installment. However, Toby McGuire was the quintessential Peter Parker
I tend to agree with HMF . Spidey 1 and 2 were great, while Spidey 3 was far less motivational. After 1 and 2, you would come out feeling hopeful and powerful ( Nice lines like ‘Great power comes with great responsibilities’ ) .. but after 3, you would just come out feeling – well, unsure of how you felt. Some scenes in the movie, including some silly attempts at humour, were very unnecessary … the graphics were stunning though.