Talaash Box Office: The answer lies within

A superstar’s film (Ghajini) becomes the first in the industry to net Rs 100 cr and sets a new benchmark at the box office. A year later his next release (3 Idiots) completely changes the rules of the game by collecting over 200 crores. What is more noteworthy a fact is that, till this point, no other actor in the industry has a 100 crore film. Quite unconventionally the actor has his next release after 3 years and thus the question of the hour develops: WHAT’S NEXT IN STORE – Another 200 crore film?

Yes, you guessed it right. We are talking about Aamir Khan and his current release TALAASH. With this write up we analyse the extreme reactions (both positive and negative) to Talaash and also its box office performance. The film has collected 46 crore and 67 crore nett over the first weekend and first week respectively. Looking at the drop it has shown over the weekdays and the dent that Khiladi 786 will make into its business from second week onwards, one may speculate that the lifetime business will be in the range of 90-95 crores.

For a film belonging to the suspense-drama genre, these are very good figures and more importantly there is nothing surprising about it either. Talaash was never expected to be record-breaking, and it was quite obvious before release that the film will completely rely on word-of-mouth publicity to cross 100 crores.

But, this is only one side of the coin. A section of the industry and the media has been speculating Talaash as Brand Aamir Khan’s comeback film after 3 Idiots as if Talaash was a born successor to 3 Idiots at the relay of ticket window. And that’s where we’ve gone wrong because it is such overhyped expectations that kill a film. It’s indeed facetious that trade pundits started predicting Talaash’s lifetime numbers to be above 150cr or 200cr as soon it was announced (forget about the first look). The release of Talaash’s trailer 10 months before its release only added fuel to this fire of anticipations.

The table below showcases what I’m trying to convey and how these vaunted prospects actually developed prior to the release of Talaash.

Unfortunately, most of us are only interested in figures (rather records) without understanding the vitality of the last two columns in the above table. Frankly speaking, I don’t consider it correct to make comparisons between the above films because of the variance in genres. Superstars are god-worshipped in India but we must not overburden a good script with false outlooks.

Talaash’s performance at the ticket window also proves that every new film has its own capabilities and is disconnected with all previously released films in terms of trade. Yes, a Super Hit success increases the prospects of the star’s next release but only to an extent. In terms of acceptance, Talaash has done very well but its WOM is certainly below Barfi! & Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, two films in the recent past, which had a similar target audience. Thus, the drops will be more. At the end of the day, irrespective of the genre, star, promotions there is one Golden Rule that stays true always: “Audience acceptance is directly propotional to the moolah a movie rakes in at the box office”

Archit Mishra tweets @architmishra_06

Read more articles from Archit Mishra