New Delhi: Ash-Abhishek starrer Guru premier on Friday night in New York turned a gala event, one that gave Americans a taste of Bollywood’s high-flying success.
"It’s incredible to find something like this in New York,” Roopam Jain, an NRI based in New Jersey told The New York Times.
"A lot of Indians have struggled. My father came here in the early ’70s. He came from nothing to become very successful. It’s kind of nice to see the Indian community doing so well,” he added.
People flocked the tickets windows of theatres in the city to catch Mani Ratnam’s marvel on Friday night. Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai, spoke to the media and fans in the busy Times Square as their film opened around the world.
“I have an announcement,” Bachchan teased. “The film’s going to start in 10 minutes!”
At the vast AMC Empire 25 theater on West 42nd Street, it got a high-profile American debut that many said was unusual for a movie without the apparent crossover credentials of a Bollywood film like Bride and Prejudice.
Things have changed for Indian cinema in the US. Seven Hindi-language films each made over $2 million last year at the United States box office. Only one of them, Water, had an American distributor.
Long available on videotape, Bollywood films can be seen on an increasing number of movie theatres across the United States and, since November, on cable television video-on-demand in several states.
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