Bollywood Falls for the Power of Merchandising

Bollywood's latest superhero, Drona, hits cinemas this week but, thanks to merchandising, audiences in India will already have read about the warrior king, bought his plastic sword and donned white-tasseled jumpsuits.

The £5.6m action film, featuring Bollywood's top male actor Abhishek Bachchan, aims to break the mold of Indian cinema by making money from merchandise.

In Hollywood an action or animation film is rarely made without a studio tying up deals with toy makers and clothing companies. But Bollywood makes virtually no revenue from merchandising.

Andrew Heffernan at Eros International, the firm behind Drona, said: "If you look at a Hollywood movie the revenues are split evenly between theatre [ticket] sales, home entertainment and merchandise. In Indian cinema merchandise at the moment generates nothing. That is going to change with malls and multiplexes and a middle class of hundreds of millions."

The first sign of this trend will be a comic strip featuring a story of Drona's early exploits. In Hindu mythology he was the greatest teacher of the arts of war, although in the Bollywood movie he appears to have gathered a female bodyguard to help fight evil.

Other studios have also noticed the Drona trend. The TV station Cartoon Network plans to sell toys of popular characters, while one Bollywood mogul plans a dozen stores selling Bollywood-branded caps, bed sheets and T-shirts.

Trade analysts say that the greatest problem will be piracy. In India, goods from software to T-shirts are copied and sold in markets and from roadside stalls. "Everything gets pirated within 24 hours of launch," said Komal Nahta, the publisher of trade journal Film Information.