Aamir Khan and Kareena Kapoor’s Laal Singh Chaddha will hit the theaters on Friday, August 11. Akshay Kumar’s ‘Raksha Bandhan’ is also coming on the same day. In a way, where there is noise of boycott of these films, in the last few months, there is pain of continuous flops of Bollywood films. Be it Ranbir Kapoor’s ‘Shamshera’ or the recent release ‘Ek Villain Returns’, R Madhavan’s ‘Rocketry: The Nambi Effect’ or Ayushmann Khurrana’s ‘Manyk’, Hollywood film remake ‘Runway 34’, Akshay Kumar’s ‘Samrat’ ‘Prithviraj’ or Hollywood-like Kangana Ranaut’s ‘Dhaakad’, all these films were beaten at the box office one after the other. But why is this happening? To know the truth of this fate of films, ‘Navbharat Times’ spoke to trade analyst Komal Nahta. He told why the opening business of Bollywood films has been affected.
Is the public tired of Hindi film stars? Is it no longer the same thing in Bollywood films as before? On one hand, while Bollywood films have been consistently beaten at the box office, films like ‘Pushpa’, ‘RRR’ and ‘KGF 2’ set new benchmarks of success. However, many South films have also flopped badly. But still, the way South films have done better business at the box office than Bollywood, the public has also started thinking that Hindi films have lost their magic. Komal Nahta says, ‘People figured out the reason for this that during the lockdown, people watched a lot of dubbed films of South on different satellite channels and YouTube. That is why the stars of South have started being recognized in every house in the rest of the country as well. This may be true to some extent, but not completely. Because the names of Bollywood stars like Ajay Devgan, Salman Khan, Akshay Kumar etc. do not become unknowingly due to the arrival of South’s stars from house to house.
Bollywood movies are unable to connect with people
Komal Nahta, who keeps a close watch on the box office business, further says, ‘Bollywood films are not doing well because people are not able to connect with them. For example, Liger will get a good opening, that is because the trailer of ‘Liger’ has connected with the public and its tagline ‘Sala Cross Breed’ has started getting popular. So the makers of Bollywood who think that they are having a bad time, it is not a bad time. Just the trailer of your film is not able to connect with the people.
That’s why ‘Ek Villain Returns’ got beaten up
Referring to the bad business of the recent release Ek Villain Returns, he says, “It seems that the production company neither heard the story of ‘Ek Villain Returns’ nor did anything else. Just considering it as a way to take forward the franchise of a popular film, it was flagged off. Otherwise, who would be ready to make such a thing, in which a hero i.e. John Abraham is a taxi driver, but does shopping in big malls. There are many such mistakes in the film and one has to strain one’s mind to understand a lot of scenes. Seeing the weak response from the public, the ticket prices of the film have been reduced from weekdays ie Monday.
Ekta Kapoor changed her entire plan after watching ‘Dagaara’
Komal Nahta explains that Ekta Kapoor believes a lot in her gut instincts, otherwise she would not have thought of releasing Anurag Kashyap directorial Dobaaraa in theaters instead of premiering it on Netflix. He says, ‘It happened that when Anurag showed the preview of that film to producer Ekta Kapoor, she was happy. He felt that this film should be released in theatres. However, Ekta had also signed a deal with Netflix before watching the film. The film was to be released directly on OTT. He immediately spoke to Netflix and they agreed. But if the film comes on OTT after its premiere in the theatres, then you will get less money.