New Delhi: Walt Disney Co. India is going ‘glocal’ for Marvel’s latest superhero offering Captain America: Civil War that releases in India this Friday. While building on the international buzz and rave reviews for the film, the studio is also hoping for a local connect in the form of young Bollywood star Varun Dhawan who is the voice for protagonist Captain America for the film’s Hindi dubbed version. Captain America is played by Chris Evans.
The primary thrust of marketing the Evans and Robert Downey Jr.-starrer has been on pitting the two leading characters, Captain America and Iron Man against each other.
“One of the main cornerstones of the campaign really has been the ‘Team Captain America vs. Team Iron Man’ thing because we’ve never seen that happen in a movie before,” said Amrita Pandey, vice-president-studio, Disney India. “The ‘choose your side’ has been one big campaign plug all over the world, as well as in India, which is very provocative. You’ve seen them together in the Avengers movies and now they’re fighting each other.”
Additionally, as seen in the second trailer, there is an appearance by actor Tom Holland who plays Spiderman, making it the first time the character will be part of a Marvel film, in the same frame as Captain America and Iron Man. So, the idea is to cash in on the clash of the giants as part of a big cinematic moment.
The second strategy has been to leverage the massive praise pouring in for the film internationally. Thanks to early premiers and previews held all over the world, the studio has epithets like ‘near-perfect addition to the Marvel cinematic universe’ to flaunt.
But the third and perhaps, most important strategy for the home ground has been getting actor Varun Dhawan to dub for Captain America’s character.
“The audience (for Hollywood) is not just limited to multiplexes and metros in India. There’s a sizeable market in smaller towns as well, and localising the content only helps in better reach. If the voice is known, the audience can relate better,” said Sidharth Ghosh, vice-president, Fountainhead MKTG, the marketing division of Dentsu Aegis Network.
The news of Dhawan’s voice casting comes in the wake of the massive success of Disney’s fantasy adventure The Jungle Book which has netted more than Rs.168 crore in its four-week run at the box office. The film boasted of a massively appreciated voice cast that included names like Nana Patekar, Om Puri, Irrfan, Priyanka Chopra and Shefali Shah.
“It was great to have Varun on board because he has such a following among kids and youngsters,” Pandey said mentioning how Dhawan unveiling the Captain America figurine at a theatre in Mumbai was a big draw. “When you have a young star like that, the film becomes more talked about in that sense. In fact, very often when Captain America is in uniform (in the film), you can’t really see his face. His mask is on so it’s almost like it’s Varun.”
To be sure, Dhawan’s voice casting for the superhero film was not entirely inspired by the impact that The Jungle Book has made. The process had begun much earlier.
“During The Jungle Book, we spent so much time writing the Hindi dialogues and thinking about voice casting that we figured even on Captain America, it would be a great initiative. I feel we were inspired by our own creative process, not by the box office,” Pandey said.
She added that not every Hollywood release would need that kind of star voice casting.
“It would depend on the film. I think we want to focus more and more on performers, getting the right fit and up the ante on how much time we spend on the Hindi version for sure, inspired of course by The Jungle Book. In terms of getting stars, every film may not need that,” Pandey emphasized.
Apart from strategic marketing, the superhero film also has about 70 brand partners on board— with about Rs.35-40 crore spent through above-the-line and below-the-line promotions across five brands—Lifebuoy, Axe, Nearbuy, Dell and Audi —and Rs.100-110 crore on retail sales of merchandise sold as part of these brand partnerships.
“Marvel is truly growing as a franchise in India. While we’ve continued some of our associations from series like Avengers, there are some new players who we felt would do justice to our brand and bring in positive visibility,” said Abhishek Maheshwari, vice-president and head-consumer products and corporate strategy and business development, Disney India.
Buoyed by the success of The Jungle Book, Disney plans to give the new film just as wide a release and is looking at more than 1,600 screens. The studio also believes the global buzz for the superhero flick is higher than that for a children’s animation film.
“Summer holidays are a really amazing time to release all these movies,” Pandey said. “Of course, a big film like The Jungle Book has happened earlier this month but I feel Marvel has its own audience. Globally, Civil War is a big tent-pole Marvel movie. All that plays a big part and then we pick the right chords that we want to play with.”
