Spirit’s Korean Plans: Just Marketing Gimmick?

Ever since Prabhas’ latest film “Spirit” started to feature a Korean actor, and the director Sandeep Reddy Vanga announced that it will be released in Korean in South Korea as well, many are excited to say that the Indian film market will now grow beyond the usual North American Box Office. But the reality is quite different and shocking too.

From Korean dramas like Squid Game to Crash Landing On You, from K-pop icons like BTS to Psy are quite popular in India, and most of our teen girls and boys are huge fans. If we look at the vice versa, not even a single Korean can be found out there who is a fan of Indian movies, singers and music directors. While Korean content entices the Indian audience, the same cannot be said about Indian content. No web series that came from India, thriller, romcom, or any other genre, has reached the Top 10 in Korea so far. That naturally explains things. If we look from that angle, Spirit releasing in South Korea is just a marketing gimmick, but nothing else.

If we come to other East Asian markets, only Dangal worked out in China, Baahubali in Japan, but other movies never worked. So this is more like once in a blue moon kind of market, but not like North America, Canada, UK and Australia box office, where there’s a lot of Indian diaspora to watch the movies made in India. Even Hollywood tried to find a market in China by taking one of the films of Transformers to a Shanghai backdrop, but that clicked only once. Later, whatever money they are making in India, they are making the same from China for most movies, except one or two are clicking big time.

One thing is that the East Asian audience is not open to embracing content from other cultures, like the way Indians do. And with the Indian diaspora not present in great numbers in those countries, definitely Indian films won’t find a great market there.