Hollywood Starts Making Bollywood Films in India

From The New York Times:

Salmankhan_2 An Indian woman in a flowing beaded gown glides through a pond. A mosquito net brushes over her lover. And to insistent drumbeats of the Indian heartland, a dancing phalanx of tunic-clad women twirls. These images appear in the trailer of a forthcoming movie, “Saawariya.” The melodramatic film, whose Hindi title means “beloved,” has an Indian director and cast. Its characters speak Hindi and burst into eight song-and-dance numbers. It is, in other words, vintage Bollywood — but for one thing.

It is brought to you by Hollywood.

The studio behind “Saawariya,” Sony Pictures Entertainment, is the first in a wave of American studios to produce their own kaleidoscopic Bollywood musicals. The American studios are keen to make money in India, but in a nation where $19 of every $20 spent at the box office goes to indigenous films, the studios are deciding to join Bollywood, not conquer it with their American-made fare. (Picture shows Salman Khan, the hero of Saawaiya)

More here.