Box office gets a leg-up from out-of-the-box revenues

A three-fold increase in box office collections from overseas movie releases helped Indian movie industry to a 27 per cent rise in revenue last year. In fact, 74 per cent of the overseas earnings of Indian movies last year came from two Aamir Khan starrers - Dangal & Secret Superstar - which released in China.
The Chinese market, it seems, is lapping up even old Bollywood fare, with the Salman Khan starrer Bajrangi Bhaijaan, released in 2015, earning Rs 35 crore on its opening weekend on Friday.

China, in fact, may be Bollywood's and Indian cinema's new hunting ground - given the fact that the country, which had less than half the number of screens compared to India, eight years back, now has more than four times the screens vis-a-vis India and is closing the gap with the US - the world's largest movie market in terms of screens.

India's screen density is also the lowest among major movie markets - languishing at half that of China, with the US leading, at almost 16 times the screen density of India.

Bollywood in particular had a good year with an all time high of 9 movies grossing a minimum of Rs 100 crore at the domestic box office.

The number of Bollywood movies that earned at least twice their investment saw an improvement last year, compared to the year before and is the highest in four years.