'My Name Is Khan' has a big opening in the US

A blast from the Arctic has been dumping heavy snow on New York but on Thursday Shah Rukh Khan was given a gift from the weather gods: a calm winter night for a screening of My Name Is Khan.

The ImaginAsian theatre in New York filled up quickly — even the US media which ignores Bollywood releases has been stirred over how the Shiv Sena has been bullying theatre owners in Mumbai into scotching Khan’s film.

The Shiv Sena’s skullduggery has made headlines in most US broadsheets including The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. “I think the Shiv Sena is creating bad karma by being so mean-spirited,” said Linda Langly, who pays up to $12 a ticket to watch premieres of Bollywood movies with her Indian boyfriend. 
Western markets, especially those with a fair sprinkling of South Asian diaspora like in the US and the UK, have become a major source of revenue for Indian films in recent years. MNIK producers will be hoping to offset any losses in Mumbai against the commercial success of the new release in North America.    

Fox Star Studios is content with its distribution deal for filmmaker Karan Johar’s new release. Its plans of releasing as many as 500 prints of the film in more than 65 countries worldwide are unprecedented for a Bollywood project. In the US and Canada it opens in 121 theatres on Friday which is on the lavish end of what Bollywood films open on. 

The Khan-Kajol film is likely to draw South Asians into theatres in droves over the Valentine’s Day long weekend from 13-15 February. Monday is a President’s Day holiday in the US so MNIK is likely to earn strong box-office receipts.        

“Shah Rukh has an absolutely inbuilt audience with Non Resident Indians (NRIs). He has a very strong connect with them. I thought he was one of the best things about MNIK so I have no doubt that they will love the film. They will certainly check it out,” said Anupama Chopra, author of King of Bollywood: Shah Rukh Khan and the Seductive World of Indian Cinema.

“Bollywood is no longer the shabby, slightly embarrassing country cousin that NRI parents insist on bringing home. Hindi films are trendy. So is India,” Chopra whose life is half Mumbai, half Michigan soid.

According to Chopra, the meteoric rise of Shah Rukh could be read as a metaphor for a country changing at breakneck pace. “He is a Muslim superstar in a Hindu-majority country and his life reflects the fundamental paradoxes of a post-liberalisation nation attempting to thrive in a globalised world,” says Chopra.

While promoting MNIK in New York, Khan told the WSJ that he wanted his new film to be a cross between hit like Pedro Almodovar’s Life is Beautiful which was a foreign language film watched by the global masses.

“Will MNIK really connect with the US mainstream audience? I am not so sure,” said Chopra. Vibhuti Patel, contributing
editor for Newsweek, gave the film high marks for grappling with a topical subject, but panned it as “far too long” for Western audiences. “I think it was a crossover between Forest Gump and Rainman. It didn’t have the song and dance. The film had autobiographical overtures for Shah Rukh,” said Patel.