With 2017 in its final month, Bollywood is trying to up its game and garner good box office collections. December has traditionally been a strong month for revenues, but the industry received a blow this year with release of Padmavati being postponed.
Touted to be one of the most expensive Hindi films, Padmavati received flak for its interpretation of history and protests from many cultural groups and political outfits prompted an indefinite delay in its release.
While director Sanjay Leela Bhansali says its a work of fiction, Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) says they will consult historians before clearing the movie and the multi-level process might take another two months.
The delay means Fukrey Returns will be the only big release in early December and it will take till the 22nd of this month for a star-studded release — Tiger Zinda Hai with Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif.
This means that a historically lucrative month will have only one mega film to bank on and this could spell bad news for the industry. There is added pressure given that last year, the box office collection for Bollywood movies declined and was around Rs 3,700 crore.
Apart from Baahubali: The Conclusion, 2017 has seen very few blockbusters like Golmaal Again and Varun Dhawan-starrer Judwa 2 collecting Rs 204 crore and Rs 132 crore, respectively in the domestic market. These numbers hint that box office is in great need of another blockbuster this year and now all eyes are on the sequel of Ek Tha Tiger.
A bigger cause for worry is that this year even popular stars couldn’t bring audiences to theatres including Salman Khan for Tubelight, Shah Rukh Khan for Jab Harry Met Sejal and Ranbir Kapoor for Jagga Jasoos.
Trade analysts expected Padmavati to get around Rs 300 crore but even that number could have come down given the intensity of opposition to the film. Gautam Jain, Partner at Ormax Media, spoke to Moneycontrol explaining how such controversies impact a film’s revenues. “In case the film doesn’t get a smooth and deserving release in a couple of territories, it could lead to a revenue loss of 15-20 percent on the first day itself,” Jain said recently.
Amazon Prime had paid Rs 20-25 crore for the digital streaming rights of Padmavati and the satellite rights could be acquired for Rs 20 crore and music for Rs 10 crore respectively. All this is at stake due to the delay in release of Padmavati.
The revenue contribution of the top 50 movies since 2014 doesn’t paint a rosy picture for the film industry as it has been on the decline. Last year, only seven movies were able to cross the Rs 100 crore mark in terms of net domestic box office numbers and this figure remains the same since the last five years, says a FICCI-KPMG report.
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