Breakout from Bollywood? Internationalization of Indian Film Industry

In the context of an emerging economy, the paper analyzes indigenous growth and internationalization. Using novel and original data, the paper studies the Indian film cluster in Mumbai, Bollywood. It argues that as the world’s biggest commercial film cluster and a conspicuous growth phenomenon in an emerging economy context, Bollywood can be seen as a paradigmatic case for adding to our understanding of the development of film clusters outside the USA, as well as suggesting more general insights into the growth and internationalization of industries in emerging economies. The empirical analysis of the paper points to the importance of home market, government regulation, and industry structure for Bollywood’s recent export growth. The paper discusses how the existence of a well-defined and geographically centered social network among producers, directors and other key roles in filmmaking in Mumbai supports the development of a ‘Bollywood model’ of filmmaking with a industry structure remarkably different from Hollywood’s.