The Marathi movie Ani… Dr Kashinath Ghanekar has turned out to be a success at the box office. The Subodh Bhave starrer has been attracting the audience right from its release on 8 November. In fact, the shows of the films have increased in the last few days and the producers have claimed that right now it has around 6000 shows in India.

Directed by Abhijeet Shirish Deshpande and also starring Sonali Kulkarni, Sumeet Raghvan and Vaidehi Parshurami, the biopic on the superstar of Marathi theatre Dr Kashinath Ghanekar has been widely accepted by audience and critics alike.

The film was pitted against the biggest Bollywood movie Thugs Of Hindostan, which saw the union of two of the biggest superstars Amitabh Bachchan and Aamir Khan for the first time ever.

The Vijay Krishna Acharya directorial, however, wronged all the box office predictions by turning out to be a flop. It is the most expensive Hindi film till date with a cost as enormous as around Rs300 crore. After 10 days the film has earned only Rs137.25 crore in India.

There have been talks on the social media that Ani… Dr Kashinath Ghanekar has worked at the box office only because Thugs Of Hindostan has failed. How true is it?

In my personal opinion, it is not true whatsoever. When a Marathi film gains wide acceptance, it really doesn’t matter if any other film it released with worked or failed, no matter how big it is.

This can be proven by a simple recent example. During the 2015 Diwali period, Salman Khan and Rajshri Productions joined hands after a long time for Prem Ratan Dhan Payo. On the same day, two big Marathi films Katyar Kaljat Ghusli and Mumbai Pune Mumbai 2 also released.

Prem Ratan Dhan Payo turned out to be a superhit. But despite that, both Marathi films remained unaffected and managed to attain success at the box office.

If the success of one Hindi film didn’t affect two other Marathi films, it is obvious that the success of one Hindi film wouldn’t have affected one Marathi film released on the same day.

By: Keyur Seta