Bollywood – we know it’s entertaining, popular and escapist, but what can the numbers tell us? Of the thousands of movies released in the last decade, we analysed the 1218 which were rated on IMDb (the Internet Movie Database) to tell the story of 10 years of movies in four charts.
The King of Bollywood is…..Anupam Kher?
Most people might remember a movie for its lead male or female actor, but the hardest working actors in Bollywood seem to be those who play second fiddle. Anupam Kher has appeared in 89 movies over the past decade, more than any other actor. Rajpal Yadav, the prolific comedian, comes next, with 77 appearances. Among women, most appearances are not made by a supporting actor, but Priyanka Chopra herself, who, through a combination of starring appearances, cameos and item songs, tops the list among actresses, followed by Divya Dutta with 41 and 38 films respectively.
Place cursor over name for photograph of actor or actress
Image Credits: Wikipedia, Bollywoodmdb
Rahul Sharma meets Priya Singh...
‘Rahul’ is as the most quintessentially Indian name – or that’s what Bollywood thinks at any rate. We looked at all movies for which a character’s first name was available and appeared more than twice in the last ten years, and found that Rahul is the most popular name of male characters in Hindi movies, followed by ‘Raj’ (and is closely associated with Shahrukh Khan). The others in top five are Karan, Arjun, and Vikram. As for female characters, ‘Priya’ tops the chart, followed by Anjali, Neha, Pooja, and Maya.
For last names, we looked at all characters, in leading and supporting roles, and found around 4,000 characters whose last names were available. Singh is the most common last name, followed by Sharma and Khan.
Our movies are in love with love
Romance dominates Bollywood, and so is evident from movie titles. “Love”, “Luv”, “Pyaar”, “Dil” and “Deewana”, together are a part of 87 movie titles. There is also a trend of having numbers in titles - as “2”, “Do, “One”, “Ek”, “3” – which appear 72 times. “Mumbai”, “Delhi” and “London” between them appear in 26 movie titles.
This is also the case with plotlines. “Love”, “Life”, “Family”, “Married”, “Police” are the most frequent words used in IMDb’s description of movie plots, while among places, Mumbai, Delhi, and India are most popular.
Of course, the most interesting thing about movies would be how much money they make, but the tragedy of Bollywood is that reliable information on box office collections is impossible to collect. Various sources we tried offered us their own numbers, but these are neither official nor independent and unbiased, and so unusable.
Movie season
October and March turn out to be the favourite months for film releases, with a cumulative number of 126 and 115 films being released in these months, over the past 10 years - compared to average count of 101.
As for weeks, the top four include week numbers 35, 39, 40 and 41. Interestingly, the 38th week lies at the bottom - perhaps due to big releases schedule in the weeks ahead.
Why these weeks and these months? Bollywood trade analyst Taran Adarsh says that it could be because these are just before holiday seasons.
