It’s almost June and the country is sweltering.  But ironically, it’s not just the man on the street feeling the heat, it’s also the domestic film industry, namely Bollywood.

Half the year has gone and till now the highest box office grosser for the year remains The Jungle Book, grossing a staggering Rs 240 crores at the box office — a figure you would normally associate with one of the trinity of Khans (Salman, Aamir or Shah Rukh). That’s not all. This year has seen films like X-Men: Apocalypse and Angry Birds beat the opening weekend collections of their Bollywood counterparts. Captain America: Civil War collected over Rs 37 crores in its opening weekend collections and remains among the top three weekend grossers of the year. For a Hollywood film to remain the top grosser halfway down the year despite SRK and Akshay Kumar having had releases, would have been unimaginable till about a couple of years back .

The signs that Hollywood will now seriously challenge the dominance of Bollywood were felt last year. For the first time ever, we had three Hollywood films cross that magical, self-assigned milestone: the Rs 100 crore mark. Who would have thought that in a year that gave us three huge box office champions (Bajrangi Bhaijaan, Baahubali and Prem Ratan Dhan Payo), we would be left not admiring their (predictable) excellent performance at the box office, but the triumph of the perpetual underdog: Hollywood.

This was the year where Fast and Furious 7 became the highest grossing Hollywood film ever in India with Rs 172 crore ($26 million). Jurassic World trounced all competition on its way to a $1.6 billion gross worldwide, of which Rs 152 crore ($23 million) came from the land of Shah Rukh Khan. And to top it all off, in flew the Avengers with their harder, better, faster, stronger sequel Avengers: Age of Ultron, making Rs 111 crore ($16.8 million), eclipsing the original Avengers, which peaked at Rs 83 crore ($12.6 million) back in 2012.

So much so that like the Indian stock market, the Bollywood box office also saw the mid- and small-budget movies deliver the goods, while the bigger ones failed to pack a punch. On the whole, theatrical collections for Bollywood films dropped 6.7 per cent, year-on-year, in 2015 — from Rs 2,753.78 crore to Rs 2,567.98 crore.

So where does that leave us? Like China, which is currently in the middle of something of a cinema boom despite strict laws on the number of foreign films that can be shown there in a given year, India too is witnessing a change, albeit on a much smaller scale. While China’s growth can be chalked down to the dramatic increase in the number of screens, there could be a more nuanced reason for the change in India. Certainly, tastes are evolving. Piracy is a double-edged sword, impacting revenues but also turning audiences into fans of shows like Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad. The more they watch American content, the more they have a desire to see similar content (ie Hollywood films) on the big screen.

Another major reason is the strategy of dubbing to which Hollywood films resort. All the major Hollywood films are dubbed into multiple languages including Telegu, Tamil and Bengali. This not only helps them increase their box office collections, but also opens up the regional markets for them, increasing the screen count. Hindi films still don’t garner huge numbers in regional markets where they face tough competition from the local film industries like Telegu and Tamil. If one analysed the box office numbers, the regional film industry doesn’t seem to have faced the impact of Hollywood. At present, it’s only eating into the Hindi film industry’s numbers.

The gaming industry, which is a huge rage with the millennials, has also contributed to the growing popularity of Hollywood. Larger than life action sequences in these films are a big draw and the affinity towards video games for the young make them a target audience for films that are based on super heroes. Most of the biggest hits for Hollywood in India and the world over have come from the Marvel and DC basket, underlining the popularity of comic book heroes and how Hollywood has been able to milk their appeal.

The success of the television series Quantico will now see Hollywood push the envelope even further. With Priyanka Chopra and Deepika Padukone bagging leading roles in popular Hollwood franchise films, the agenda is clear: America is taking the Indian market seriously. If Irrfan Khan was used in niche roles to establish a local connect, Padukone and Chopra’s star presence in these films will help them garner more eyeballs in the India market.

The situation might not be alarming yet, but the signs are there. Hollywood is taking the Indian market seriously now in addition to China and we will have to find new strategies and content ideas to counter the onslaught. On the other hand Hollywood is also grappling with a shortage of ideas and stories ,most of their big successes coming from franchise films  and from the staple of DC and Marvel .In this battle between the two largest film industries ,it will be interesting to see which one comes out top .Will Bollywood be able to hold on its market share or will Hollywood make a serious dent in India. In the words of this generation, game on.

The author can be contacted on Twitter @samarmumbaikhan