Fourth International Conference on Communication & Media Studies

Abstract

This paper focuses on the revenue generation pattern of women-centric films in Bollywood. Over the years, female-driven stories with box-office success in Bollywood (India) is not a common case as revealed by the data, which mentions that only two women-centric movies entered the 100cr club in 2018 and created a benchmark. The objective of my research is to find out the reasons behind a) Why filmmakers do not indulge more often, in making women-centric films b) Why Bollywood actresses are not making as much money as the actors, and c) Why some production houses still consider it suicidal to invest in women-centric projects. The research involves analysing secondary data gathered from various articles and journals. The findings of this research are that filmmakers are still reluctant to make and produce women-oriented movies because they do not get the audience they need for the film to be commercially successful. To see a woman protagonist is still difficult for the audience as it doesn’t appeal to their sensibilities. Also, talking about this genre, only a handful of scripts get made into films, and the budgets are probably one-tenth of the films with a male star. That’s the reality, though it’s changing. The research concludes that the new trend of female lead films doing well at the box-office is picking up, but the Hindi film industry is still very far from pay and budget parity. There has to be more focus on encouraging such meaningful cinema by the Indian government and audiences.