Tag Archives: bollywood box-office

Season of Suicide in Bollywood

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Quick Gun MurugunWhat would happen if a sparsely populated village that requires around 100 kilos of wheat each month is supplied a thousand kilos? Around 90% of the product will go waste. Well, the situation in our very own Bollywood is similar these days because of the abnormal number of films releasing. It’s unbelievably true that 12 Hindi films have released in last two weeks (28th August and 4th September).

But that’s not all as next Friday (11th September), 5 more flicks are coming out. And apart from these 17, there are 6 Hollywood films and 1 Bengali film (Sob Choritra Kalponik starring Bipasha Basu) too. Just imagine – a total of 24 new films in three weeks! It can’t get more insane than this.

The following table is the list of new releases in these three weeks: –

August 28 September 4 September 11
Kisaan Chintu Ji Baabarr
Quick Gun Murugun Mohandas Vaada Raha… I Promise
Toss Aagey Se Right Aamras
Daddy Cool Fox Ruslaan
Yeh Mera India Three I Can’t Think Straight
Sob Choritra Kalponik Bachelor Party The Unforgettable
Love Khichdi The Final Destination 9
The Taking Of Pelham 123 District 9
Race To Witch Mountain

Because of the high number of releases and the lack of promotion of most of the movies, the theatres are almost running empty. In fact, many of the shows of these films got cancelled due to ‘no audience’.

Yeh Mera India

The reason is simple. The cost of tickets and the lack of time do not allow a common man to enjoy  more than two films per week. Even if a person has all the time and money, has he or she heard most of the names from this list? Because of this overdose, even few well made flicks go unnoticed.

A year that has seen less than a handful of successful films in the first half is now laden with such high numbers of unsuccessful films. What’s worse is that such mass suicide will continue in the coming months. So don’t be surprised if 2009 becomes the year with most number of flops in Bollywood ever.

3 Day Affair

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Gone are the days when box-office hits were movies that easily lasted at least 10-15 weeks and most of them completing silver jubilee. In today’s times, it’s impossible to see such a thing happening.

We are living in a see-and-forget-world. The world has become so fast that the first weekend collections itself determine whether a film is a hit or flop! And most of the times, a person who hasn’t seen a particular movie labels it as good or poor by just looking its business over the first three days.

singh-is-king2

Let’s take two examples –Singh Is King and Kambakkht Ishq. Singh Is King was considered as the most successful Bollywood film when it released in 2008. The stamp of a blockbuster was granted to it just because its producers and distributors booked almost all theatres in the country with around 10 shows per day.

As expected, people stormed into the theatres in the first weekend as it was a hugely awaited movie. Therefore, it gets the status of one of the biggest hits ever in Bollywood. However, you will hardly hear any praises from those who have seen this. Singh Is King’s audience rating in Imdb.com is just about 5 out of 10. Any regular reader at Imdb will know that to have a rating of 5 over there isn’t good by any means.

KambakkhtIshq

Kambakkht Ishq is even a bigger example. Some critics are of the view that it’s a super hit judging by its business on the first three days. But do we have any appreciators for this so called super hit? On Imdb, the audience’s response is merely 3.6 out of 10 for this flick.

This proves that in today’s times, it’s not difficult to ‘cook’ a box-office hit. All you need is a top actor, an exciting promo and a good marketing strategy. In fact, it seems some filmmakers are putting in more efforts in creating their film’s promo than the actual movie.

There is a dialogue in the movie Halla Bol (sadly, another sincere effort going unnoticed) by some side actor. It says “Aaj kal sab kuchh marketing pe chalta hai. Jab tak public ko achchhe-bure ki samaj aaye, teen din mein maal andar”. The ‘3 Day Affair’ cannot be described more accurately than this!