Can Prem Ratan Dhan Payo beat PK at the box office?

Q. Will Salman Khan’s ‘Prem Ratan Dhan Payo’ be able to beat PK at box office, as its getting a perfect Diwali release, and they’ve announced that they are planning bigger promotional strategies than Happy New Year, and opening advanced bookings 3 months before its release… Post Diwali being the biggest holiday in the country does it have any chance to beat Happy New Year’s Single Day Collection at box office if its word-of-mouth is very good? – Pintu

A. No film that is promoted well or has advance bookings opening from 3 or even 6 months, can cross the 300 crore mark. A week of advance booking is more than enough for even the biggest of releases. For any film to beat PK, it has to have extraordinary content and word-of-mouth. As for the opening day record, it would all depend on the day of release. If Prem Ratan Dhan Payo releases on Diwali puja holiday, then it has no chance. The day after Diwali, like Happy New Year, it might. Also, Diwali is the not the biggest release period. In the last few years, Christmas followed by Eid are easily the most lucrative festive periods for film releases. We have said this in several articles before and say it again, the success of PRDP would depend on how well the youth take to the film, especially the audience in big cities.

Q. Aamir Khan movies have repeat audience. Others dont, why? – Aslam

A. When a film has a lasting impact on the audience, they watch it again. And the credit for creating that impact should go to his script sense, as even those films that didn’t feature him but were produced under his banner, have done very well. He chooses his movies carefully, which a lot of other actors like Hrithik Roshan and even Shahid Kapoor do too, but Aamir has this gift of picking films that look risky on paper, but go on to be cult classics. The effort that he puts into every aspect of filmmaking whether it’s script, pre-production, editing, acting and then ensuring that the film is marketed well, is commendable to say the least. The quality of his films over the years has also resulted in the blind trust that his audience have in his films. The feeling is, if a film stars Aamir Khan, it has to be worth the price of a ticket. In the IMDB Top 250, there are only about 6 Indian films and 5 of them are Aamir Khan starrers. That says a lot about the quality of Aamir Khan films, doesn’t it?

Q. Why Baby is not certified as hit even if it does business in the range of 90 – 95 cr. It doubled its investment at 80 cr itself? - Tinku Jain

A. Baby was produced and promoted at a cost Rs 73 crore. The India share for the distributors will be around Rs 45 crore and overseas the film has performed poorly, so the overseas share is Rs 6 crore. Satellite rights might fetch 15-20 crore (best case). So the combined revenue is still at Rs 66-71 crore. The makers of Baby (T-Series) will lose money, and for a film to be declared a clean-hit, it has to earn much more than its investment, hence the film cannot be declared a Hit.

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