Here’s an unkind one that dropped recently about Bollywood stars. They’re left to matching swagger in pan masala ads even as stars from the South take over the pan-India box office war. Hindi films have fallen like ninepins lately, paving way for such jokes and memes even as three films from the South have done blockbuster business at the national box office and abroad. Pushpa: The Rise - Part One, RRR and KGF: Chapter 2 continue drawing the crowds even as the clamour that Bollywood is finished goes on in sections of social media. Allegations of nepotism, which gained ground after Sushant Singh Rajput’s death, have further stoked the toxicity.
Bollywood isn’t finished, and one needs to look elsewhere to understand the Hindi film industry’s current spate of flops. The fact is the industry has erred while picking films to release once cinemas opened after the Covid lockdown. The long absence of new films owing to theatres being shut had whetted audience appetite. By December 2021, as cinema occupancy was gradually getting back to full capacity status, patrons were looking forward with renewed zest for the bona fide movie experience. This is where the southern film industries got it right. Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam filmmakers went all out, strategically restarting business with mega releases flaunting their biggest superstars in order to cash in on bottled-up fan hunger for big-screen spectacle. KGF 2, RRR and Pushpa apart, a regular flow of biggies kept coming in across the four languages, including Beast, Valimai, Bheemla Nayak, Hridayam, Bangarraju, Akhanda, Radhe Shyam and Marakkar: Lion Of Arabian Sea. Not all of these films clicked, but at least they kept audience interest in the big screen scene alive.
Consider KGF 2, RRR and Pushpa — the three films around which the current all-India craze for southern releases is built. Each of these is a systematically hyped and smartly marketed ‘Event Movie’, released across multiple languages including Hindi to maximise business. While Pushpa was primed as Telugu superstar Allu Arjun’s pan-India entry vehicle, RRR marked the return of Baahubali director SS Rajamouli and was toplined by Telugu heavyweights Ram Charan and Jr NTR along with Bollywood stars Alia Bhatt and Ajay Devgn. KGF 2, starring Kannada superstar Yash, came as a bigger bang for a nationwide fan base that the first film of the franchise had already established in 2018. For the record, the three films have together collected over Rs 1,800 crore so far in the domestic market alone across languages, with both KGF 2 and RRR looking good enough to bust a few all-time records. More pertinently, these films have fared better in Hindi versions than most recent Bollywood releases. Pushpa has raked in over Rs 106 crore in its Hindi version, reports the business site koimoi.com, while the figure stands at Rs 260 crore-plus (and counting) for RRR dubbed in Hindi. KGF 2, still running to big business almost everywhere, has already collected Rs 397.5 crore (and counting) through theatrical run of its Hindi version.
The Bollywood story around the same time has been different. Since December last year, the average Hindi release can be placed in one of two categories. The first is of films that perhaps had the potential to draw the crowds but were poorly or wrongly promoted and/or mistimed for release (83 and Jersey). The second category comprises films that induced little or no anticipation among fans, who would rather wait for the OTT release or not watch these films at all (Runway 34, Chandigarh Kare Aashqui, Badhaai Do, Jhund, Bachchhan Paandey, Tadap, Attack, Heropanti 2). What went missing was the one surefire blockbuster material that could turn Bollywood’s fortune. The audience isn’t necessarily boycotting Bollywood, and the fact is evident from the positive show of three Hindi releases since November last year. These are Sooryavanshi, which released in the Diwali 2021 weekend, besides The Kashmir Files and Gangubai Kathiawadi this year.
Akshay Kumar’s cop action drama Sooryavanshi did a domestic business of Rs 195.04 crore reports koimoi.com. The site classifies the film’s box-office status as ‘Plus’, denoting it’s a release that recovered investment and yielded some profit. Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Alia Bhatt-starrer Gangubai Kathiawadi has grossed Rs 128.89 crore so far and is dubbed ‘Average’, a status accorded to films that recover investment. The only Bollywood blockbuster in this phase has been The Kashmir Files. The Vivek Agnihotri genocide drama has seen a lifetime collection of around Rs 252.5 crore against a reported budget of around Rs 15-20 crore, which makes it one of the most profitable productions ever in terms of return on investment (ROI).
Look closely and you notice a similarity among these three Bollywood releases, despite belonging to diametrically different genres. Sooryavanshi, Gangubai Kathiawadi and The Kashmir Files were the only Hindi films lately to generate the right hype and pre-release curiosity, just as KGF 2, RRR or Pushpa. While on Sooryavanshi, smart marketing blitz before release liberally built it up as an Event Movie, playing up the fact that the other heroes of director Rohit Shetty’s cop universe — Ajay Devgn as Bajirao Singham and Ranveer Singh as Sangram Bhalerao Simmba — were joining Akshay’s protagonist Veer Sooryavanshi in the adventure. Gangubai Kathiawadi lived up to its billing as a powerful Sanjay Leela Bhansali drama starring Alia Bhatt in a career-defining role. The Kashmir Files, a modest production about the Kashmir genocide and exodus of Kashmiri Pandits in the early nineties, quietly garnered audience interest through an intelligent social media campaign aimed at stirring the spirit of nationalism. That fact is films that fail to excite the audience or involve them emotionally before release will fail. Barring these three films, Bollywood’s roster of releases over the past months have seemed like a hurried clearance sale meant to do away with products that were stuck owing to lockdown.
In this context, not all big films from the South that tried courting the pan-India box office have succeeded in the post-lockdown phase. The Prabhas-starrer Radhe Shyam and Malayalam icon Mohanlal’s Marakkar: Lion Of The Arabian Sea failed to find audience connect on being released across languages including Hindi. Tamil superstars Vijay and Ajith have also struggled with pan-India ambitions for their new films, Beast (released in Hindi as Raw) and Valimai respectively.
The South has always been far more organised than Bollywood about how it makes, markets and releases films, which explains their traditionally higher hit rate. The near-whitewash that Bollywood has faced of late only makes the fact evident. With most superstars of the South now eyeing the pan-India market, Bollywood stars must find ways to hold onto fan base. They could start off by taking tips from their southern counterparts on how to market and release the right film at the right time, beyond merely scurrying for festive Fridays.
(All figures according to film trade estimates)
Vinayak Chakravorty is a critic, columnist and film journalist based in Delhi-NCR.
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