Bollywood is the informal term popularly used for the Hindi-language film industry based in Mumbai, India. The term is often incorrectly used to refer to the whole of Indian cinema; it is only a part of the Indian film industry.
Bollywood is the largest film producer in India and one of the largest in the world.
The name is a portmanteau of Bombay (the former name for Mumbai) and Hollywood, the center of the American film industry.
However, unlike Hollywood, Bollywood does not exist as a physical place. Though some deplore the name, arguing that it makes the industry look like a poor cousin to Hollywood, it has its own entry in the Oxford English Dictionary.
Bollywood is often referred to as Hindi cinema, even though frequent use of poetic Urdu words is fairly common. There has been a growing presence of Indian English in dialogue and songs as well. It is not uncommon to see films that feature dialogue with English words and phrases, even whole sentences. There is a growing number of films made entirely in English.
The 2000s saw a growth in Bollywood's popularity in the world. This led the nation's filmmaking to new heights in terms of quality, cinematography and innovative story lines as well as technical advances such as special effects, animation etc.
Some of the largest production houses, among them Yash Raj Films and Dharma Productions were the producers of new modern film. The opening up of the overseas market, more Bollywood releases abroad and the explosion of multiplexes in big cities, led to wider box office successes in India and abroad, including Devdas, Koi... Mil Gaya, Kal Ho Naa Ho, Veer-Zaara, Rang De Basanti, Lage Raho Munnabhai, Krrish, Dhoom 2, Om Shanti Om and Ghajini, delivering a new generation of popular actors (Hrithik Roshan, Abhishek Bachchan) and actresses (Aishwarya Rai, Preity Zinta and Rani Mukerji), and keeping the popularity of actors of the previous decade.
