Priyanka Chopra and Farhan Akhar’s The Sky Is Pink - A commercial flop that deserves better

The year 2019 has been terrific for Bollywood as it has been delivering a flurry of successes.

A record number of 100 crore and 200 crore club biggies made the box office report card look impressive for this year. But, there have also been certain offbeat and niche films that may not have reached the century mark but still done well to earn respect and commercial gains. Badla, Article 15 and The Tashkent Files are some examples.

One expected The Sky Is Pink too to join this list as well. Alas, that didn’t really turn out to be the case as the film has emerged as a major flop at the box office as the first-week collections just reach around the Rs 15 crore mark. In fact, so low have the footfalls been for the film that it won’t even reach a lifetime of Rs 20 crore. Sad, but true.

So what really went wrong? 

After all, the film was quite sensitively handled and did have the kind of content that catered to a niche audience segment. This, of course, meant that one didn’t expect the film to emerge as a box office biggie. However, it did have the potential to reach a lifetime of Rs 50 crore. That seemed possible too since the film was led by Priyanka Chopra in the lead and she has been an actress who is ever-so-reliable. Moreover, Farhan Akhtar provided further face value as well to the film. This isn’t all as the promo of the Shonali Bose directed film did meet with a good response amongst its target audience base.

However, there were many factors that went against it. First and foremost it was the title that proved to be its biggest undoing. Even for a book, this sounded really literary and for a movie, this was always going to be a strict no-no. Moreover, one fails to understand why a Hindi language film would have an English title and that too which sounded like that of an American/European art-house affair.

Thankfully, the promo was well cut but then the marketing and promotion didn’t follow through as it didn't really convey clearly what the film was all about. There was a film in a similar zone that had released many years back, Taare Zameen Par. It quite effectively conveyed what the film was all about and even though that too hadn’t taken a spectacular opening on its clash with Welcome, it did catch up well with word of mouth and a stellar act from both the child artist Darsheel Safary as well as film’s producer-director-actor Aamir Khan.

In the case of The Sky Is Pink, the competition turned out to be really strong with War going great guns even in its second week. While that took care of the Hindi speaking segment, the ones who preferred English films in theatres chose Joker and that was pretty much the end of the road for The Sky Is Pink.

Disappointing, since the film was made well and deserved a better audience for itself. However, it’s a mix of internal and external factors that have resulted in a very poor box office performance.

Nonetheless, the film can take solace from the fact that such kind of genre manages to find traction for itself on the digital medium. In a few weeks from now, the film would be available online. One just hopes that at least there it finds its due, and that too not just amongst Indian but even international audiences.