Spider-Man’s Pavitr Prabhakar, Based on Peter Parker, Drives India Wild
On a recent Sunday evening, fans crowded into line outside a multiplex in India’s capital city of New Delhi. After the lights dimmed inside, they erupted in cheers, with some whistling and dancing in the aisle when their favorite character appeared on screen. India is the most movie-crazy country on the planet, and led the world in the number of tickets sold in 2022, according to Statista.
Such scenes are common for India’s Bollywood epics. This time the frenzy is of a new flavor. The film, a Hollywood import, Sony Pictures’ “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse," is smashing box-office records in India and generating unusual fervor because it features a character thought to be the first Indian superhero to appear in an American blockbuster.
The animated character is Pavitr Prabhakar, a web-swinging, chai-sipping fellow whose name is a play on Peter Parker, the teen behind the original Spider-Man mask. “Spider-Verse" posits multiple parallel universes where various versions of Spider-Man protect the population. Pavitr has a key supporting role as one of them, and he uses his Spidey-like powers to help the movie’s star, a teenage boy, save the world from a supervillain—and does so in the fictional metropolis of Mumbattan, a mashup of Manhattan and Mumbai.
Pavitr is new to many U.S. viewers—but here he is a long-dormant Indian comic-book hero many know from childhood. He is considered the Indian Spider-Man Indian moviegoers are showing up in droves wearing Spider-Man costumes and in Mumbai, fans painted elaborate murals showing Pavitr waving an Indian flag.
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