The footfalls of Hindi Films in the last couple of years has declined. Around 33 crore tickets were sold in 2013, which dropped to 32 crore in 2014 and went down further in the last two years with Hindi films selling just 30 crore tickets in 2015 and 2016. A drop of 10% from 2013 to 2016 is quite significant – more so with the increase in the number of multiplex screens across the country.
Out of the 125 crore ticket sales in the last 4 years, majority of tickets have been sold for Salman Khan, Aamir Khan and Akshay Kumar films. Akshay may not deliver those big grossers, but he has done 12 films in the last 4 years and has helped sell nearly 10 crore tickets. He is the lifeline for exhibitors in the Hindi markets. Aamir does very few films, Shah Rukh Khan films are not sustaining after the weekend and Hrithik Roshan is going through a tough patch.
Remove the Top 3 ticket-sellers and the industry is as good as dead. The internal battle of trying to pull each other down is increasing with ‘clash’ announcements almost every other week. 95% of film releases are failing, yet we continue to churn out more rom-coms than we ever have. Top directors like Aditya Chopra and Karan Johar, who once made pan-India films, are now making films that can only be watched by the high-society or urban audience in 4-5 cities. Even that section of audience is rejecting films like ‘Befikre’ which was directed by the man who once gave us a film like ‘DDLJ’.
As far as content-driven films are concerned (i.e when the audience come to watch a good film and not the star), the Hindi film industry has very little to show apart from ‘Tanu Weds Manu Returns’ which went on to collect 150 crore at the domestic box office. That aside, no other film has even crossed the 125 crore mark without an established star and a non-Khan film is yet to cross 200 crore.
To coincide with the Bollywood decline is the growing strength and acceptance for Hollywood and other regional films. A film like ‘Sairat’ is grossing 100 crore even though its business is mainly restricted to just one major state in the country. Hollywood films like ‘Fast and Furious 8’ without any major promotional campaign or city tours by stars, should finish with India business of 90 crore. ‘The Jungle Book’ last year went on to collect nearly 200 crore in India.
And then we have a Telugu film which has shown the potential of film business in the country by collecting nearly 130 crore net on a single day, that too on a non-holiday without any ‘festive’ advantage. Even the combined might of two major Hindi superstars – Shah Rukh Khan and Hrithik Roshan – only resulted in collections of 30 crore net on the first day.
Like S.S. Rajamouli, another visionary South director – Shankar – will soon extend his base throughout the country and his films have the potential to be equally big with the added advantage of star-power. It might feature a Akshay Kumar, but it’s still a film produced in the south.
It’s quite clear that the weakest link of the Hindi Film Industry is its content and the lack of visionary writers and directors. But we continue to invest more time, effort and money into marketing and getting the perfect release date – both of which, a good film doesn’t even need.
Superb Article..
Only those 3 khans,Hrithik and Akshay is selling those ticket.
Bollywood should produce good writers with Directors.
Big fault with Hindi cinemas is that they wait for the Stars.
If you are confidence with the script why not make Star out of the script.
Bajirao Mastani, Kaminey, Barfi,Baadlapur etc are only because of director and Script.
Whats a big deal if Akki sell 10cr tickets in 4 years?? Salman sells it in a span of 11 months(BB+PRDP+Sultan).
@indicine If possible this article must be sent to every writers and director of bollywood so that they learn something from it.
The Bahubali turn out to be once in a life time movie.
The bumper opening only can be produced by Salman Khan.
This can only happen if Salman Khan and Rajnikanth join together.
Like bahubali have Maximum number of 9000 screens and bumper opening everywhere
One of the very best articles from your website. It beautifully states exactly what I have felt about Bollywood for long now. Really needed you to write something like this as I believe you have the potential to bring out some hard-hitting pieces with balance and stats. You should do similar stuff more often. Good job!
*Main reason is the quality of movies no up to the mark……
*Bollywood movie should start invest more in a movie
*Should show unity to avoid clash
*movie shouldn’t telecast on T.V. before 1 year from the release date
*Bollywood industry should stand against pirated websites like torrent.
we used to think that a film’s lifetime collection does not depend on a star but depends on content. opening depends on a star. but this film baahubali 2 has even proved that wrong. what can be the market value of prabhas in hindi belts? zero. he can be a superstar in south but not here. but look at baahubali 2. without a star it went on to do that what even superstars of our country has not achieved apart from aamir khan, i mean breaking all time opening record on non holiday. this film on the month of april has broken a hindi film’s record released on the biggest national holiday of the year.
so the question is does even opening depends on stardom. if a prabhas can break opening day record only with the help of a brand name that too on non holiday then i think even stars like varun dhawan in hindi belt can definetly do it.
so i think the time has come when we should only concentrate on the film and not the star and we should not hesitate to make a grand film like ett, hny and dhoom 3 with stars like ranbir kapoor or dhawan.
why not make a dhoom 4 with varun dhawan and make it on a scale as big as the khans and let’s see it’s outcome?
What an Article Sir……Brilliant
After a long time some Brilliant Article by Indicine….
Please make more articles like this….
good article .
our directors r either inspired from sum south masala movies or foreign mvies…they should be original,real life stories & biopics hve done very well in 2016…dangal/airlift/ms dhoni/sultan/rustom …hollywd style filmmaking hve flopped badly .
keep it simple and deeply rooted to india .evn karan johr despite being a multiplex & overseas movie maker doesn’t try to make hlywd style movies..the reason he is so successful!
@indicine bahubali 2.0 has been well marketed and non other than Bollywood masters like karan johar. so if a movie is marketed highly the response is always going to be high.
2. bollywood writers and directors are not thinking out of the box very rarely they come up with something different because the investors dont want to risk their money.
3. too much politics has entered in their system and ranking stars according to collection only mistake which is repeated by media every time a movie is released. value of the films will always drop only for the purpose of being no.1.
4. no one actually cares about other people in the industry its a selfish driven industry the teamwork is gone now they want all to beat the khans instead of making meaningful films end up repeating same stuff and copying south movies.
OMG !!!
What an Article …. Fantastic
Directors like imtiaz,kashyap,zoya,vishal,basu,dibakar r some most acclaimed directors ,but they r total loss making directrs if u will give them bg budget movies bcoz they r too inspired from foreign cinema tht making a good bollywd movie for them is impossible . they all hv given big big commercially flops mostly apart from ikka dukka fluke hits. IN future they will give even bigger flops so working wid them is like suicide for commercial actors!
Even director like sajid khan & farhan khan r better thn thm..atleast they don’t make movies tht goes ovr the top of indian viewers like they make .
their worst MOVIES LIKE humshakls & TMK did 60 + cr business.
Vishal and khsyp’s worst movies did 20+ with evn bigger budget .
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ATBB is a SMALL HONOUR now.
I was telling this for months , Indicine and all other box-office experts was under estimating baahubali 2 and robot 2.0
Which was the last hyped movie in Bollywood in true sense ? Hum ? Khalnayak ?
OK , now we are witnessing the box-office dinosaur ” baahubali” .. and in 8 months , arrives the box office Godzilla ” robot ”
This is just a beginning ..
And we have to admit , shanker and rajamouli are the biggest crowd pullers in the country and they can be more than double of rajnikanth
Khans are responsible for the downfall of bollywood by making crap movies
They are only media made actors
While Akshay Ajay Hrithik has Airlift Baby special 26
Krissh KMG JHODHA AKBAR, KRISSH 3
SINGHAM DRISHYAM
BAJIRAO MASTANI ETC
A LOT OF MOVIES TO PROUD ON
BUT OUR OWN INDUSTRY IS TROLLING THEM FOR MAKING SUCH GOOD MOVIES
Nice article I want to add some point
1. There should restriction of promoting films like south
2. More single screen should be made with high quality like delete and galaxy (Delhi n Mumbai respectively)
3. Films should be based on more Indian content with Hindu aur Sikh mythology
4.there should be no date declaration of release before before postpost production
5.stop using pakistani
6. Think for film not business
7. Make grand films
8.star should think about films not for stardom
Indicine these khans are responsible for this they only fight for release their movie on holiday agar unke paas dum hai non holiday pe release karke dikhao dusro ko chance dona holiday par movie release karne ka baahubali collection 130 cr ye khans ke muh pe tamacha hai jo keval holiday ke bharose apni movie release karte hai aur khud ko superstar kehta hai
Very insightful article with many thought provoking arguements.
Superb job guys
Yes I agree that without Salmir bollywood is indeed dead but the main cause of concern is that our writers more so actors are not writing what I call ‘FULL ON ENTERTAINMENT’ screenplays. I believe our audience still want to be entertained more so than educated when watching a film… nothing against PINK or Neerja type movies but when I have had a long wk or maybe several tiring wks nonstop then on that rare friday evening I want to watch a Golmaal or BB type film to entertain me n drown away my troubles. The same is true of the working classes who imo are being neglected by todays writers as you rightly put it are more concerned about the troubles of the middle classes/ upper classes…!
Alot of food for thought but lets just hope our insane producers start demanding that writers start writing more enteraining scripts which have universal appeal…!
Nice analysis Indicine.
But you also need to see that every year hundreds of movies too releases in South as well as Hollywood. Out of them handful of movies gets hit.. and just 1-2 movies like Bahubaali and TJB are made every year in South and Hollywood also.. Bollywood too makes 1-2 such movies every year.. Like this year we have TZH which promises to have high octane action, last year we had Shivaay (Though it failed..but VFX and action were good) and before that Bajirao Mastani.. So i feel all the industries are at the same level..
How there is 50 crore collection from one state and 40 crore collection from whole india even if there is no tax in Andhra Pradesh how the hell is it possible and why only in the case of bahubali it happens whereas in case of other telugu megastars they struggle to breach 100 crore in lifetime buisness of their movies. So now indicine instead of highlighting the truth you will now just follow blindly other websites. Is the blogger of indicine has been replaced because I am losing faith in this webbsite it looks like they just copy paste stuff from other websites.
Last year too we have plenty of this kind of articles after the mammoth success of The Jungle Book and a few other Hollywood & South biggies. Then BAAP of Box Office SALMAN KHAN came with SULTAN and aschse din for bollywood came back…. The same going to be repeated after Tubelight release. #Mark my words!
Bahubali has shown the true potential of how much a film can collect if it releases through out India in all circuits. This is just shame to Bollywood. You call superstar/megastar but they fail to earn 30+ /day. There are hardly any director/producer or actor in Bollywood who have consistently made good commercially strong movies. Few exemptions are: Rajkumar hirani, Aamir Khan and Rakesh Roshan. They are ones who have delivered consistent good movies. But surprisingly the other’s who we call super stars have never been consistent nor try out of box movies like Bahubali.
Salman – Can be called a superstar only after 2010. Between 1995 to 2010 he was less then ordinary.
Shahrukh – People still want him to deliver a Kuch Kuch hota hai or DDLJ but he fails. His movies are not very strong in content. He should be called opening star rather then super star.
Akshay – He either does all comedy or all action, and had never tried roles which are very strong in character. With 25 years in Industry he should try strong character oriented movies.
Hrithik – Where the hell is he? He does tries different character roles but goes on missing every now & then. And moreover then all his movies face clashes.
Moreover the industry – actors/producers/trade don’t share a good relationship. There is no unity. God bless Bollywood.
IT WILL GO DOWNWARDS ONLY IF SRK MOVIES DON’T CLICK WITH PAN INDIA AUDIENCE..
THATS THE IMPACT SRK HAS ON BOLLYWOOD.. ONE GOOD MOVIE BY HIM BOLLYWOOD WILL START ROLLING..
ONE GOOD MOVIE FROM KHANS EVERY YEAR.. WHICH REACH TO PAN INDIA AUDIENCE IS ENOUGH FOR BOLLYWOOD LOVERS AND FILM INDUSTRY
I know when bang bang released before release people/critics everyone decided to give only negative publicity. And after release everything given to haider and thinking here producer should invest 150-200 cr movie where all industry and specific khans jealous to everything and trying to pull down everyone….till date i couldnt find any reason why i shouldnt like bang bang…name any hindi movie where we have that much good vfx
If sallu will do 3rd class fighting that is mass movie…if will do bb then outstanding …. any movie would you want to watch 2 nd time after 1-2 yrs…answer is no.
I agree with you. Controversy around every award shows is a result also one of the factors. What I hate most about bollywood is manipulating and lobbying in awards.
this is the first article i rate indicine for!!! summed it all up!!!