Hindi language cinema
| Hindi Cinema | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Main distributors |
Dharma Productions Yash Raj Films T-Series Rajshri Productions Eros International Vinod Chopra Films Phantom Films Reliance Big Pictures |
| Produced feature films (2014) | |
| Total | 263 |
| Gross box office | |
| Total | ₹15,500 crore (US$2.4 billion) (2016) |
| National films | India: ₹3,500 crore (US$565 million) (2014) |
Bollywood is the sobriquet for India's Hindi language film industry, based in the city of Mumbai (formerly Bombay), Maharashtra. It is more formally referred to as Hindi cinema. The term "Bollywood" is often used by non-Indians to refer to the whole of Indian cinema; however, Bollywood proper is only a part of the larger Indian film industry, which includes other production centres producing films in many other Indian languages.
By revenue, Bollywood is the largest film producer in India, representing 43% of the net box office, while Tamil and Telugu cinema represent 36%, and the rest of the regional cinema constitutes 21% as of 2014. Bollywood is also one of the largest centers of film production in the world. Furthermore, Bollywood is one of the biggest film industries in the world in terms of the number of people employed and the number of films produced. According to J. Matusitz and P. Payano, in 2011, over 3.5 billion tickets were sold across the globe, which in comparison is 900,000 tickets more than Hollywood. Bollywood produced 252 films in 2014 out of a total of 1969 films produced in Indian cinema.
The name "Bollywood" is a portmanteau derived from Bombay (the former name for Mumbai) and Hollywood (in California), the center of the American film industry. The naming scheme for "Bollywood" was inspired by "Tollywood", the name that was used to refer to the cinema of West Bengal. Dating back to 1932, "Tollywood" was the earliest Hollywood-inspired name, referring to the Bengali film industry based in Tollygunge (in Calcutta, West Bengal), whose name is reminiscent of "Hollywood" and was the centre of the cinema of India at the time. It was this "chance juxtaposition of two pairs of rhyming syllables," Holly and Tolly, that led to the portmanteau name "Tollywood" being coined. The name "Tollywood" went on to be used as a nickname for the Bengali film industry by the popular Calcutta-based Junior Statesman youth magazine, establishing a precedent for other film industries to use similar-sounding names, eventually leading to the coining of "Bollywood". "Tollywood" is now also popularly used to refer to the Telugu film industry in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.
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