I finished updating my list of Bollywood movies on Amazon Prime to reflect the massive increase in the streaming service’s collection of Indian films. I’ve made every effort to assemble the most accurate and comprehensive list of Indian movies on Amazon Prime that you will find anywhere.
This massive overhaul was necessitated by Amazon’s decision to close their Heera channel earlier this month. The move made things more equitable across the globe, as American Amazon users no longer required an additional subscription in order to watch movies that international Prime subscribers could access for free. The bulk of the Heera collection was incorporated into the existing Prime catalog.
However, not all movies made the jump. Some — like Parched — are no longer available for streaming, only for rent. Others — like Krazzy 4 — are still available for streaming, but require a subscription to Eros Now, which was added to the Amazon Channels collection just before the start of the new year. All told, about twenty-five of the Bollywood titles available on Heera failed to transition to Prime.
One of the reasons why I didn’t list Indian films available in languages other than Hindi or English on my Heera page was that Amazon’s own Heera page subdivided its collection by language, making it easy to find that Bengali or Telugu movie you were looking for. With Heera gone, all of the Indian films were incorporated into Amazon’s useless “foreign” category, a catchall for any movie made outside of the United States. With nearly 7,000 titles and no way to filter by language or country, how on earth could Indian cinema fans be expected to find what they wanted to watch?
That’s why I decided to expand my Amazon Prime list to include all of the Indian and Pakistani films available for streaming. This meant scouring Amazon’s unwieldy video section and double-checking it against the Amazon streaming list at Instant Watcher, ignoring broken or inaccurate links and verifying the most common title spellings at IMDb and Wikipedia. I found some interesting stuff during my research, including the fact that, although Dil Se.. isn’t available for streaming, its Tamil-dubbed version — Uyire — is.
The end result of my efforts is a list of 783 Indian, Pakistani, and Desi movies (plus two Amazon original TV series). The list breaks down as follows:
431 “Bollywood” movies (made up of Hindi, English, and other Desi-themed titles)
126 Bengali movies
1 Bhojpuri movie
1 Gujarati movie
1 Kannada movie
14 Malayalam movies
39 Marathi movies
4 Oriya movies
9 Punjabi movies
1 Sanskrit movie
98 Tamil movies
28 Telugu movies
3 Urdu movies
27 documentaries and comedy specials
I will continue to update the Amazon Prime list as new titles are added. If you notice any movies that belong on this list that I have missed, please let me know in the comments below.
I earn a commission on Amazon’s free-trial subscriptions made through the links at my site, so if you want to support the creation and maintenance of this list, you can do so by trying Prime for 30 days or Eros Now for a week — or you can watch my all-time favorite TV show Running Man with a free trial of DramaFever. Thanks for reading! — Kathy
In March, 2017, Amazon added a new Indian movie channel to its American lineup of add-on subscriptions to Prime Video. The Heera channel boasts hundreds of titles in Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Tamil, and Telugu. Here’s my take on the service.
Foremost in the minds of many consumers when choosing a streaming provider is the strength of the service’s catalog. With nearly 400 titles in the Hindi collection alone, Heera has a lot to offer fans of Indian cinema. As of the time of this writing (October, 2017), Heera already carries twelve movies released theatrically in 2017. The service has a number of new stand-up comedy specials by Indian comedians, as well as the original TV series Inside Edge starring Richa Chadha and Vivek Oberoi. (Much of the content available with the additional Heera subscription in the States is available with a standard Amazon Prime subscription elsewhere in the world.)
Maybe even more important, Heera has what are arguably the two most desirable Bollywood films for repeat viewing: Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham… and Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge. Streaming services have been racing to sign contracts for access to the full catalogs of the most prominent Indian studios and production houses. Netflix has a deal with Shah Rukh Khan’s Red Chillies Entertainment, while Amazon/Heera have contracts with Yash Raj Films and Farhan Akhtar’s Excel Entertainment. Heera’s recent addition of several films starring or produced by Salman Khan point to a relationship between the star and the streaming service as well. (At the time of this writing, Netflix, Amazon/Heera, and iTunes are all vying for Eros International’s huge catalog.)
Another nice feature of Heera’s collection is a subset of movies produced by the National Film Development Corporation, an organization devoted to financing films of artistic merit that might otherwise struggle within the traditional studio format. Heera also has a number of older titles from the 1970s and earlier.
Heera’s deep, diverse catalog — I haven’t even touched on movies in other languages or Heera’s collection of animated children’s shows — appeals to a wide audience. A multi-generational household will find something for everyone in the family to enjoy, for less than the cost of a movie ticket.
That leads to another key determining factor for streaming subscriptions: price. If you live in one of the estimated 64% of US households that already subscribe to Amazon Prime, paying an additional $4.99 per month for Heera is a no-brainer. It’s cheaper than Netflix’s most basic one screen/standard definition plan for $7.99 per month, and you get access to an extensive collection of Hollywood and international movies available through the basic Prime membership, with includes dozens of Indian films.
Things get more complicated if you’re only subscribing to Heera for the movies and wouldn’t otherwise use Amazon Prime. You can save a little money with a year-long subscription to Prime for $99, bringing the per-month cost of a Heera subscription down to $13.24. (Amazon offers a 30-day free trail of Prime, if you’re unsure about a long-term commitment.) A strictly month-to-month plan costs $14.99 — $10 for Prime plus $4.99 for Heera. That’s three dollars more than the current cost of Netflix’s most expensive four-screens, Ultra-HD plan.
Of course, there are other aspects to consider when choosing a streaming service. One really cool feature available with Amazon/Heera is the ability to change the size and background color of subtitles. There are five text sizes available, as well as three color options: white text/no background, white text/translucent grey background, or yellow text/black background. You can preview a sample of what each style and size subtitles will look like, even if you adjust the settings in the middle of watching a movie. Keep in mind that some titles do not have English subtitles (including my beloved horror flick Khamoshiyan). Heera also allows you to download movies for later viewing, and the video quality is good on an iPad.
The biggest downside for Heera is that — as an Amazon subsidiary — its catalog shares the same abysmal organization that plagues the rest of Amazon’s video catalog. It’s not just that catalog is disorganized; some movies are impossible to find unless you specifically search for them by title. Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge isn’t mentioned on any of the twenty-four pages of movies listed under the “Heera Bollywood Movies” section. I only knew to search for it by name because so many other Yash Raj films are available.
It’s also impossible to skip more than one page ahead through Heera’s desktop catalog (okay, you can jump from Page 1 to Page 3). With titles sorted by “Newest Available” — which gives the fullest possible iteration of the Bollywood catalog — it took me 1 minute 45 seconds to scroll all the way to the last title — and that’s on a new computer without stopping to actually read the titles. Woe unto you who forgets the name of a movie listed on Page 24 and has to look for it on a computer with an ancient operating system.
The Heera app available on my smart TV has a few lists — such as “Heera Popular Movies” or “Heera Comedy Specials” — that sort the movies available in that category in order of popularity. That means that you’ll have to scroll through 150 or so titles to find Fanaa under the “Heera Bollywood Movies” section, which only lists about half of the movies available in that category anyway. The “Heera Recently Added Movies” section is a couple of weeks out of date as well. Your best bet is to set aside some time to add the movies you want to see to your Watchlist using the full website. OR you could select movies from this handy list I made of all of the Hindi titles available on Heera. (Tips via PayPal are always appreciated.)
As of right now, Heera is my preferred Bollywood streaming service, over Netflix and Eros Now. The catalog is both current and deep, and the price point for Prime subscribers is hard to beat. Heera’s launch triggered a scramble among service providers, and Hotstar‘s recent foray into the American marketplace could mix things up once again. As great as Heera is, its reign as the best Bollywood streaming service could be brief if Amazon isn’t vigilant.
Heera features Indian movies exclusively, with titles in Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, and Telugu, as well as almost 300 Hindi films. The Hindi collection spans nearly seven decades, the oldest title being 1951’s Deedar and the newest titles being OK Jaanu and The Ghazi Attack from earlier this year. Heera’s catalog balances newer commercial fare with an assortment of older movies and quality productions by the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC), making it a good choice for multi-generational households or those looking for a diverse selection.
Among the more recent offerings are movies by Yash Raj Films (like Sultan and Befikre) and Excel Entertainment (like Rock On 2 and Baar Baar Dekho). Heera also features the collected works of everyone in Bollywood with the surname Bhatt — minus Alia, whose only appearance on the list is in Kapoor & Sons — so if you’ve been itching to marathon the Murder or Raaz series’, you’re in luck! The two 2017 titles give Heera an edge over both Netflix and Eros Now, neither of which currently has any Bollywood movies from this year.
If you’re intrigued, give Heera a whirl with the free 7-day trial. I’m trying it out myself right now, and I’ll post my thoughts on the user experience side of things once my investigation is complete.
With more than thirty Indian titles added in the last month — including a bunch of mainstream Bollywood films like those added today — it sure looks like Netflix is feeling the heat from Amazon’s new Heera channel, which just added the Hindi version of The Ghazi Attack to its subscription service.
Amazon just delivered another way to stream Bollywood movies. Heera is a new Amazon Video channel dedicated to Indian content that features more than 200 Hindi films.
Amazon Channels are add-ons to Amazon Prime that feature wider catalogs of films and shows than are included with the regular Prime package. They come with an additional subscription fee per channel, on top of the required Amazon Prime membership. You can’t subscribe to Amazon’s Heera channel without a Prime membership.
The amount of Indian content available for free with Amazon Prime is pretty minimal: 25 titles, and that includes documentaries and movies in languages other than Hindi. The Heera Channel adds 380 titles across five languages, including 206 Hindi movies, 70 Tamil films, 67 Bengali movies, 23 Marathi films, and 14 Telugu movies.
What’s more, Heera has recent blockbusters like Kapoor & Sons, Sultan, and Fan. None of those titles are presently available on Netflix, so Heera can help you catch up on the biggest hits of 2016.
If you’re not already an Amazon Prime member, click here to sign up for a 30-day free trial. Once you’re signed up for Prime, head to the Heera Channel page to sign up for a 7-day free trial of the streaming video channel. The regular subscription fee for Heera is $4.99 per month.
Since I already subscribe to Prime just for the free two-day shipping, paying another $4.99 per month for Heera seems like a good deal, at least in the short term. The value of any streaming service depends on the quality of its catalog, and I’ll be investigating Heera’s more thoroughly in the coming days. The channel subscription is month-to-month, so you can cancel anytime.
If you were going to join Prime just for the sake of Heera, it would cost you $15.98 per month: $10.99 for the Prime membership and $4.99 for the Heera Channel subscription. A full-year Prime membership costs $99 (or $8.25/month), dropping the monthly cost with a Heera subscription to $13.24. If you won’t use the other things Prime has to offer — like free shipping and access to the full Prime Video catalog — month-to-month is the way to go.
I’ll do a more in-depth investigation of Heera’s catalog and how it compares to the other streaming services in the future. [Update:Here it is!] In the meantime, this new streaming option is worth celebrating. The more Bollywood movies, the merrier!
I also made a couple of additions to my list of Bollywood movies on Amazon Prime. While I don’t think these titles are new, I just found two more movies available for free with Prime (thanks for the frustrating catalog organization and limited search capabilities, Amazon!): the 2007 English film Partition — starring Smallville‘s Kristen Kreuk, of all people — and the documentary Despite the Gods, a terrific chronicling of the drama behind the making of Hisss.
