What do you get when you cross Hollywood Bollywood?

  Based on the novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby opens on 17th May in India. It was shot with a budget of $ 125 million, director Baz Luhrmann, known for films emotional feast for the eyes as Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge. The story takes place in New York in the 1920s, in what Fitzgerald called "Jazz Age" or the Roaring Twenties.

Leonardo DiCaprio plays Gatsby, a veteran of World War II who has his eyes on a lost love and a leading extravagant lifestyles. Fitzgerald wanted to call the book Trimalchio by a hideous and extravagant in a famous novel, fictional character, but the title was changed at the last moment. Later he regretted the change, perhaps because of the reference to the Roman period would be more aptly emphasizes the timelessness of the key to the history of excess issue.

There are many fascinating aspects of the film. It portrays the life of the upper class in the United States, in the happy period between the world wars, in which people get lost in games of status and champagne. It is the fullness and richness and the idea that we can continue to consume without consequences, always a hot topic. "History does not repeat itself," said the music director of the film Jay Z, "it rhymes." The wonderful prose and tragic history were never captured really well in the movie as in the book of Fitzgerald - maybe they were this time. The most interesting aspect of the film is the way the creators tried to convince us to revive the contemporary novel in 1925, back when it was just out, by a movie almost a century later have to be.

Jay Z created the soundtrack as a mix of jazz and contemporary sounds.
What definitely makes the contemporary film is that it is filled to the brim with products and brands. In fact, it is a showcase of product placement in which it is assumed that a portion of the production budget was paid by the brand. The Great Gatsby features champagne Moët & Chandon, Tiffany jewelry and clothes from Brooks Brothers, Prada and Miu Miu. Brands up to 25% of the budgets of Hollywood films in some cases these days. In another intelligent race of cultural marketing, Gatsby has an Indian icon Amitabh Bachchan in his Hollywood debut. It is not only excellent cast is also great marketing.

Obviously, the marketing of Hollywood films developed and the question is how this applies in India. Suppose we translate the Gatsby approach for Bollywood and make it a little more extreme, would this kind of movie we get?

Suppose we set the objective that a film that would work in India and in the West do to create the first successful cross-over from India. Genre obviously is an action film and a love story. As the former requires more technology and higher budgets to make waves, we make a love story. Whether it is separated by a kind of story of Romeo and Juliet, with two celestial lover to another, but painfully over land boundaries and separations. The Romeo character is played by a Western Star, say Leonardo Di Caprio. The Juliet could by an Indian actress who can convincingly demonstrate strong-willed women are played, but sensitive. For example, Katrina Kaif. His father is a deeply anti-Western local politician whose career destroyed when his daughter married to be an American. Is the father of Romeo to a hard patriotic American industrialist with business interests in India, the aggressive politicians in the opposition as Juliet's father be flowing. He wants his son to take over his business. And instead of marrying a foreigner, he must marry an All-American girl.

Prejudice, vanity, fear, tradition, self-determination of women could be woven today in a changing India and West during the crisis in a meaningful history in the context of the great question of what love means. The authors should perhaps be an Indian and American duo. Together they could mix dialogues and scenes and sensitivities in both the United States and India. Instead of just falling in love with them also in love with each other, Romeo and Juliet, what is good and beautiful in the other country. All locations in India shoots could pay by Incredible India - Woody Allen has led the way in Rome and Paris. Scenes travels courtesy of Indian Railways and Indigo and Jet Airways. Members of the U.S. distribution could all be dressed by Armani and Prada. The Indians could be adjusted by Kimaya. To avoid that recognized by the spies of the father, Leonardo and Katarina could make the run-off scene of the drive from Delhi to Udaipur in a Tata Nano - to help you put the brilliant but somewhat poorly innovation. The location for a love scene or two could be courtesy of Taj Palace. Tanishq could not be exhibited jewelry and fashion items in the traveling fashion shows and exhibitions. And so on.

I do not know whether a project is to succeed in this particular line, both creatively and commercially. But it seems an opportunity for strategic thinking in the film Titanic kind of India that cultural differences that currently prevent these markets relatively separate films to be bridged. The film industry in India can play an important role in the construction of the soft power of India abroad - something that is more than a commercial interest for the country. The key is to start with a great story, of course, says more linear (to work in the West), written with passion and cultural sensitivities Indian and Western.

Tjaco Walvis is the CEO of brand consultancy and advertising agency YOU, and a speaker at the Office of Transport speakers. He writes occasional column on the softer cultural aspects of marketing which often tend to be ignored by the merchants.