"Nobody knows anything.” Screenwriter William Goldman’s assessment of the Hollywood machine is one of the most quoted truisms of the movie industry.

And it’s particularly pertinent when it comes to the relationship between the budget of a film and its eventual success.

The Hollywood model is to create an event, rather than a film, by throwing money at marketing before even a frame of a movie has been shot. When we finally get to see something such as Wolverine it’s the climax of tens of millions of dollars of marketing foreplay. The studios work very hard to create that extra bang for their buck but this strategy is by no means failsafe.

Take Baz Luhrmann’s epic romance Australia. On paper, it looked like a box-office cert. The budget was high enough to make a wallaby blush. But even the Hugh Jackman al fresco shower scene failed to tempt the audiences into the cinemas. Meanwhile, a little movie called Slumdog Millionaire went on to set the box office alight. The ultimate example of the low-budget movie that made good is The Blair Witch Project, which cost peanuts to make but dominated the horror market and spawned a multitude of imitators.

The key problem for Bollywood productions that limits their potential success abroad is not their budget but their production style. Someone such as Hrithik Roshan, for example, is undoubtedly a massive star, but his acting style is somewhat broader than the Western audience is used to.

But if Bollywood can tailor its product to fit the Western audience’s expectations, then the sky is the limit.

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