Badhaai Ho vs Thugs of Hindostan: When the subject is strong, stars, screen and studios don’t matter

Badhai Ho vs Thugs of Hindostan film industry entertainment box office 2018

A Yash Raj Films (YRF) production, an unseen pair of two Bollywood biggies — Amitabh Bachchan and Aamir Khan — and Bollywood’s most expensive venture, Thugs of Hindostan had it all but a weak script was enough to turn the film into a box office dud.

On the other hand, Badhaai Ho, which had a never-heard-before story to tell, needed no big stars or a  huge theatrical release to maintain foothold at the box office. Made at a budget of Rs 29 crore, the Ayushmann Khurranna-starrer is still running in theatres despite the release of new films.

And that’s not all. The film has crossed double digits, earning over Rs 200 crore worldwide. It has surpassed collections of Thugs of Hindostan in overseas markets like US, Canada, ($3 million in US+Canada) and Australia (cruised past A$ 700,000) where Aamir Khan has a strong fan base. Badhaai Ho has emerged as a massive hit overseas.

On the domestic front, it was believed that Thugs of Hindostan will be a huge competition for Badhaai Ho. But the tables turned in favour of the latter and for good. In the following two weeks of Thugs of Hindostan’s release, no major films were scheduled to hit the theatres. Hence, the audience had the option of either the big screen spectacle worth Rs 300 crore or the holdovers like Badhaai Ho and the viewers made their choice loud and clear.

This, in turn, proved to be a boon for theatre owners who had nothing to run when Thugs of Hindostan failed to impress movie-goers. The film had released on 4,700 screens, more than double the screen count of Badhaai Ho (2,000). In fact, Badhaai Ho, which was reduced to few screens due to new releases, got more screen space after new offerings couldn’t create any magic.

The Amit Sharma-directed film has entered its sixth week and with collections to the tune of Rs 132 crore, the film has become the highest grossing small film of all times. It has surpassed lifetime collections of Rajkumar Rao’s Stree (Rs 130 crore), Alia Bhatt’s Raazi (Rs 124 crore) and Sonu ke Titu ki Sweety (Rs 109 crore). The film is still going strong and will be running a one horse race until the release of Rajinikanth and Akshay Kumar-starrer 2.0 on November 29.

This is the second instance in 2018 when cinephiles rejected a film for its mediocre storyline. An Eid release and a Salman Khan film, despite these tags, Race 3 tanked at the box office. Films like Jab Harry met Sejal and Tubelight met the same fate.

Hits and flops are part of the game but when big stars, big studios and big budget films do not tick with the audience it is a wake up call for the film industry that audience cannot be taken for granted and only a strong subject can save the day.

But the silver lining is actors taking responsibility for the failure of their films. Salman Khan had returned as much as Rs 55 crore to the distributors for the losses incurred by them due to Tubelight’s under performance. At a recent event Aamir Khan took the responsibility for Thugs of Hindostan’s failure. The actor even apologised for not being able to entertain the audience.