Joginder Tuteja
Pick a comedy subject, garnish it with a multi-star cast, put all the right ingredients for family audiences and then serve it hot year after year. Voila! The recipe for a sure-shot box office blockbuster is well in place to be relished.
While the Golmaal franchise has been a flag bearer of this, the Dhamaal franchise too is ready to go to the next level. Let's take a look:
When Ajay Devgn brought Rohit Shetty on board for Golmaal, they had made an action film together in the form of Zameen. However, Golmaal truly changed the graph for comedy multi-starrer affairs in Bollywood. With Arshad Warsi and Tusshar Kapoor, and later Shreyas Talpade, along with Kunal Khemu turning out to be partners-in-crime, the franchise only continued to get bigger and better.
While Golmaal was a good success, Golmaal Returns and Golmaal 3 raked in even more moolah. However, history was created when Golmaal Again emerged as the first comedy film ever to break into the Rs 200 crore club.
This is what Devgn would now be hoping for Total Dhamaal as well where he has made a belated entry. Riteish Deshmukh, Arshad Warsi and Jaaved Jaffrey have been the steady partners in Indra Kumar's Dhamaal and Double Dhamaal. Sanjay Dutt was seen in both these films but Total Dhamaal has emerged even bigger with Ajay Devgn, Anil Kapoor and Madhuri Dixit stepping in.
With the film promo promising riotous fun, it is expected that family audiences would pick up this multi-starrer comedy with glee later this month. Given the credentials involved, one expects this one too to enter the Rs 200 crore club.
In fact, Kumar could well have boasted of two comedy franchise to his name but then Great Grand Masti turned out to be a major disaster, even though Grand Masti was a Rs 100 crore club success picking on from where Masti had left. Riteish Deshmukh along with Vivek Oberoi and Aftab Shivdasani could not really do much to take this adult franchise to the fourth part.
One multi-starrer comedy franchise that has found its fourth installment in the making is Housefull. Akshay Kumar and Deshmukh have been steady in this Sajid Nadiadwala production that has seen an all clean record so far. While Housefull was a hit, Housefull 2 was bigger as it entered the Rs 100 crore club. It was a repeat for Housefull 3 too and now, Housefull 4 is aiming to enter the Rs 200 crore club.
Interestingly, there has always been an addition of one new leading man in each of the Housefull flicks. Arjun Rampal was seen in the first, John Abraham was seen in the second, Abhishek Bachchan in the third and now Bobby Deol would be seen in the fourth installment.
On the other hand, Akshay Kumar did make way for Abraham in Welcome Back, even though director Anees Bazmee repeated his Welcome gang of Anil Kapoor and Nana Patekar in the second part of the family comedy franchise. The film missed the Rs 100 crore club entry by a whisker and now one waits for the announcement of the third part.
Ditto for the Fukrey franchise that has a steady quartet of Pulkit Samrat, Varun Sharma, Ali Fazal and Manjot Singh entertaining twice in a row with the sequel doing more than double the business of the first in the series. Rest assured, as and when Fukrey 3 is announced, it would be a hot property.
Meanwhile, one truly awaits the announcement of Pyaar Ka Punchnama 3. The superhit team of director Luv Ranjan along with Kartik Aryan, Sunny Singh and Nushrat Bharucha has entertained each time around and the Rs 100 crore club entry for the franchise is pretty much on the cards. This is film which is set to be hit at the announcement stage itself.
However, the 'baap' of all multi-starrer comedies is Hera Pheri which is the oldest amongst all aforementioned films and would be nothing less than a blockbuster when the third part arrives. The trio of Akshay Kumar, Suniel Shetty and Paresh Rawal has been hugely impressive in Hera Pheri as well as Phir Hera Pheri. While producer Firoz Nadiadwala has shared quite a few feelers already that third part is in the making, one eagerly awaits an official announcement.
With each of these franchises tickling the audience’s funny bone and making them roll off their seats with laughter, the genre is only going to get bigger and better in the time to come.
Lifetime collections of multi-starrer comedy franchises:
Total Dhamaal: Rs 200 crore (expected)
Double Dhamaal: Rs 45 crore
Dhamaal: Rs 33 crore
Golmaal Again: Rs 205 crore
Golmaal 3: Rs 106 crore
Golmaal Returns: Rs 52 crore
Golmaal: Rs 32 crore
Housefull 2: Rs 116 crore
Housefull 3: Rs 109 crore
Housefull: Rs 78 crore
Great Grand Masti: Rs 14 crore
Grand Masti: Rs 102 crore
Masti: Rs 21 crore
Welcome Back: Rs 97 crore
Welcome: Rs 70 crore
Fukrey Returns: Rs 80 crore
Fukrey: Rs 37 crore
Pyaar Ka Punchnama 2: Rs 64 crore
Pyaar Ka Punchnama: Rs 12 crore
Phir Hera Pheri: Rs 41 crore
Hera Pheri: Rs 11 crore
Joginder Tuteja is a trade expert and film critic, and loves to talk and write about anything that is related to films. He loves the word 'Bollywood' and truly believes that it has a ring to it that is sweeter than 'Hollywood'.
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