Harshvardhan Kapoor makes the worst possible debut

Anil Kapoor’s son Harshvardhan Kapoor has made the worst possible debut of all-time in the industry. His first film, ‘Mirzya’ directed by Rakesh Omprakash Mehra, was rejected on the morning of its release itself giving the film absolutely no chance to even recover half of its ‘advertising’ investment.

Abhishek Bachchan and Kareena Kapoor’s Refugee was rejected by the audience too, but the hype around Amitabh Bachchan’s son ensured a very good initial and a fairly decent final total (17.62 crore net, which was a good total during those times).

Ranbir and Sonam Kapoor’s first film ‘Saawariya’ fared very poorly too, but again, it got a initial and Ranbir’s performance in the film was liked. The film lost around 25 crore of its investment. Like Mehra, Sanjay Leela Bhansali too falls in the same category of directors. Their films are usually high on budget, when their films perform, the profits are small, but when they fail the losses are huge.

One other film that was rejected on Day 1 itself was ‘Lekar Hum Deewana Dil’, but the budget of that film was very low – less than 5% of a film like ‘Mirzya’.

Other actors like Imran Khan, Ranveer Singh, Arjun Kapoor, Varun Dhawan, Sidharth Malhotra, Tiger Shroff and Sushant Singh Rajput made their debuts in successful films. They were presented well too.

The biggest among actors who made their debut in the current century is Hrithik Roshan, who became a superstar overnight. It remains the debut to beat more than 16 years after the release of ‘Kaho Naa.. Pyaar Hai’ in 2000.

Coming to Mirzya, the film will lose about 45-48 crore of its investment and merely calling the film a ‘disaster’ would be an understatement. A film that has a landing cost in excess of 55 crore, will finish with lifetime domestic business of around 9 crore net.

The box office performance of ‘Mirzya’ will make the investors of Harshvardhan’s second film ‘Bhavesh Joshi’ nervous. The director of the film, Vikramaditya Motwane, has directed two films (Udaan and Lootera). Both films were critically acclaimed and hailed by a section of the audience, but both films failed at the box office. The cost of ‘Bhavesh Joshi’ is high too, so even if its a fantastic film, it could still struggle.

At the end of the day, it all comes down to choice of films. If that isn’t good, an entire career could follow Mirzya’s box office trajectory.