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How can Bollywood survive the coronavirus pandemic?

As India's Hindi film industry gets ready to resume production, what will have to change?

India鈥檚 mega Hindi film industry, Bollywood, is staring at a loss of more than $300 million. Since mid-March, film production has been stalled and the country鈥檚 9,500 theatres are shut because of the coronavirus outbreak. This has led to massive job losses.

Mumbai, India鈥檚 financial capital, which is also home to the multi-billion-dollar industry, has allowed resumption of film shoots and production work from next month, but with severe restrictions. How will social distancing norms affect filmmaking? How will Bollywood's trademark song-and-dance spectacles be filmed?

In this edition of WorklifeIndia, we discuss how Bollywood will have to change to survive the coronavirus crisis.

Presenter: Devina Gupta

Contributors: Tisca Chopra, Bollywood actor; Amit Behl, senior joint secretary, chairperson - outreach committee, CINTAA; Sidharth Anand Kumar, vice president - films & events, Saregama India Ltd

Available now

26 minutes

Image credit

A man wearing a facemask walks past a wall mural of Bollywood actors (Credit: Indranil Mukherjee/AFP via Getty Images)

Broadcasts

  • Fri 19 Jun 2020 14:32GMT
  • Sat 20 Jun 2020 05:06GMT
  • Sun 21 Jun 2020 00:06GMT

Podcast