Bollywood's first family is to give world domination a shot with a tour of 28 cities across five continents in what is being billed as “probably the biggest stage show to hit the Earth”.
Amitabh Bachchan, the Indian actor known as “Big B”, his son Abhishek and Abhishek's wife Aishwarya Rai, the sub-continent's most bankable female lead, are to star in a heady three-hour cocktail of Hindi song, up-tempo dance and Bollywood bling.
The Unforgettable Tour, which kicks off in Toronto on July 18 and will reach the O2 Arena in London on August 24, will be Bachchan's first live outing in nearly two decades. “It is strenuous, but the love of the fans is so strong, we decided on this,” he said.
The production has a multimillion-pound budget and a cast of 150. The music will come from India's leading film composers, the dance moves from Bollywood's best-known choreographer, while Shilpa Shetty, known to British audiences for her controversial appearance on Celebrity Big Brother, will appear in the London leg.
The project underscores the global ambitions of India's film industry but it also reveals how Bollywood is desperate to break out of the financial limitations of its domestic market. Big B's tour includes dates in countries as far apart as the Netherlands, Kuwait and Singapore.
It is a testimony both to his appeal and to the globalisation of the entertainment business, a process that has accelerated as rival movie moguls in Bombay and Los Angeles look to break into the others' markets.
Over the course of four decades Bachchan, 65, has starred in more than 130 films that have grossed more than £450 million at the box office, making him by far Bollywood's biggest moneyspinner. John Digwal, the promoter of the British leg, said: “We're not talking about a superstar. Not a megastar. This man, he's a legend.” However, cinema tickets in India are sold at rock-bottom prices that deliver slender returns, even with sales of three billion a year. With this in mind, Bollywood producers are aiming for rich Western audiences.
UTV, one of Bollywood's biggest film-makers, has deals in place with stars such as Will Smith and has started making films in the United States. Its head, Ronnie Screwvala, said that Indian producers were having to adapt to increasingly cosmopolitan domestic tastes, something he expected to win over audiences overseas. “From younger Indian audiences there's been a call for more genres,” he said. “The traditional quaint family drama with song and dance no longer cuts it.”
Live shows may also offer Bollywood the opportunity to recoup the large losses suffered on a recent string of big-budget flops in India. Stars such as Kareena Kapoor are thought to command fees of up to £500,000 for a single evening of live dancing. This compares favourably with the box office retirns for her latest film, Tashun, which featured a slew of Indian superstars but made only about £825,000 in its first week.
Hollywood is just as keen to gain a foothold in India, where forecasts predict that the market, driven by an increasingly prosperous middle class, will grow by 18 per cent a year until 2012.
It is likely, however, that any American assault on emerging Asian markets will be largely funded with Indian money. It emerged last month that Steven Spielberg was in talks over a funding deal with Anil Ambani, India's second-richest man.
