By Sourish Bhattacharyya Mumbai 16 August : The disasters that afflicted two Independence Day long weekend releases — Aamir Khan’s long-awaited, highly-hyped “Laal Singh Chaddha” and the Akshay Kumar-directed ‘Raksha Bandhan” A wag remarked that Bollywood has become similar to the Congress in that it has its past to remember and looks at a bleak future unless something miraculous happens.
For Aamir, “Laal Singh Chaddha’ has been his most commercially unsuccessful film since his film from 2000 ‘Mela’ even though he was granted a five-day holiday weekend that began with Raksha Bandhan which falls on August 11, concluding with Independence Day.This is his second consecutive loss after the “Thugs of Hindostan’ that was a failure despite the addition of Amitabh Bachchan.
For Akshay Kumar, ‘Raksha bandhan was his third consecutive failure -beginning with “Bachchan Pandey,” which was destroyed by the ‘The Kashmir Files’ and ‘Samrat Prathviraj’ in spite of the film being supported by the BJP top brass and being made tax-free in three states.
Both of these two films has managed to even recover a fraction of the money put into their production — and a large portion of this money in fact was used to pay the salaries of their main actors.
They’re not the only ones in the bottom of the pile They were preceded by the embarrassing failures of “Shamshera” (Ranbir Kapoor and Sanjay Dutt) and Ranveer Singh’s ‘Jayeshbhai’.
It’s as evident as day that Bollywood stars aren’t drawing crowds in post-Covid India where the worldview has been shaped by narrative-driven unique content streams via OTT platforms.For the first time in its history, Bollywood has neither a bankable star or an effective formula or even music which was its USP until a few years ago.
At the very least “Laal Singh Chaddha’ has had the largest opening in the international market following the commercial failure of ’83’.And it could be able to get some money back in China in China, the country where Aamir has a huge of his, but ‘Raksha bandhan has disappeared without any trace.
According to the trade press, among the films which have had the most successful opening weekend this year, two of them are pan-Indian films -“KGF 2” and ‘RRR’.One is a sleeper hit The Kashmir Files The other three films are Hollywood releases, including ‘Dr.
Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’, Thor: Love & Thunder’ and the ‘Jurassic World Dominion’.
Out of the four Bollywood films that made it to the list above”Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2′ (Rs 215 crore) and “Gangubai Kathiawadi” (Rs 53 crore) are the only two that are in the top 10 grossers of 2022 across all languages.
Both of these teams was backed by a super star.One was directed by rising Kartik Aaryan.
The other was directed by an actress, Alia Bhatt — historically, it hasn’t been an easy task for a film focusing on women to be successful in India.
Seven of the eight highest-grossing films (the eighth one is The Kashmir Files) come made in the South -“KGF 2” RRR’, the Kamal Haasan’s magnum opus “Vikram,” Kichcha Sudeep’s 3D Kannada film “Vikrant Rona”, Tamil actioner ‘Beast’, Mahesh Babu’s ‘Sarkaru Vaali Paata and James’ with the late Kannada mega-star, Puneeth Rajkumar.
“Jugjugg Jeezy” with Varun Dhawan, Anil Kapoor and Neetu Kapoor is on No.11.It’s even No.12 are from the deep South – the Tamil “Valimai” film, starring Ajith Kumar and Karthikeya.At the very least Bollywood can take comfort from the fact that it was made by Boney Kapoor!
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