Box Office Report Card 2022: A year when one hit was followed by 10 flops, and stars failed miserably
The Indian Express | 2 hours ago | 30-12-2022 | 05:40 pm
The Indian Express
2 hours ago | 30-12-2022 | 05:40 pm
2022 was the year which put the Hindi film industry’s ability to deliver a hit to question. Most of the headlines related to the box office performance of Bollywood movies this year were dominated by words like “underwhelming”, “low occupancy”, “miserable”, “disappointing” and “drastic opening”. Even stars like Aamir Khan, Ranveer Singh, Ayushmann Khurrana, and Akshay Kumar couldn’t save the ticket windows from no-show of the audience.Throughout the year, there was chatter about Bollywood losing the plot and failing to outperform or even perform at par with films from regional industries or Hollywood. As against its 75 per cent contribution to the total box office collection in 2019, this year it managed to only contribute 51 per cent towards the total income of the Indian film industry, revealed film producer and trade expert Girish Johar.Johar explained the 20% fall, “Dated stuff, options available globally at a touch of a button on remote for OTT and Hollywood coming aggressively into the Indian market, has pinched us doubly hard.”As per Ormaxe Media’s report, by November the gross box office collection stood at Rs 9751 crore, and by the end of December, this figure would easily cross the mark of Rs 10,000 crore, courtesy Avatar: The Way of Water. The report further mentioned that before the pandemic, the year 2019 ended with a total collection of Rs 10,948 crore.This year, the only Bollywood films that could make it to the list of top 10 highest grosser of 2022 (only in the Hindi-speaking belt) were Brahmastra – Part One: Shiva (Rs 257.44 crore), The Kashmir Files (Rs 252.90 crore), Drishyam 2 (Rs 227.94 crore), Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2 (Rs 185.92 crore), and Gangubai Kathiawadi (Rs 129.10 crore). The top two spots were held by the south Indian films, KGF Chapter 2 (Rs 434.70 crore) and RRR (Rs 274.31 crore). Hollywood releases Avatar: The Way of Water (Rs 252.05 crore), Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (Rs 130 crore) and Thor: Love And Thunder (Rs 101.71 crore) also performed better than many Bollywood releases of the year.This lacklustre box office performance of Hindi movies can be attributed to the audience’s preference for the content that they consumed during the pandemic. Film exhibitor Akshaye Rathi opined, “What happened in the last two years is we sat at home and binged on content from across the world. This changed and evolved our palette. It’s not like the pie of Hindi has shrunk, it’s just that the contribution of content from various other industries has grown significantly. Never in the past, had we had films like RRR and KGF 2 which earned Rs 1000 crore at the box office in India.”This exposure to content led to the audience rejecting anything which was mediocre. The moviegoers didn’t even step into the theaters for something which didn’t appeal to them in the first place. Rathi observed, “It seemed like a year of hit wickets and sixers. The movies that have done well, have done well for 5-6 weeks and those that haven’t worked, literally died by the afternoon on the day of their release.”This probably is because now the audience is more intelligent, reasoned Johar. He added, “The audience doesn’t want mediocre-level content. They can now smell a product. They want to watch a story which is well told, be it in any language, with any actor.”In 2022, the actors, who were once considered hit machines, couldn’t bring audience to theatres on the opening day. Ayushmann Khurrana had three releases this year: Anek, Doctor G and An Action Hero, and they couldn’t accumulate Rs 50 crore at the box office, combined. Akshay Kumar, who once easily struck a century and double century at the box office with just one film, could only bring in Rs 234.29 crore with his four movies, Bachchhan Paandey, Raksha Bandhan, Samrat Prithviraj and Ram Setu. Aamir Khan (Laal Singh Chaddha), Ranbir Kapoor (Shamshera), Ajay Devgn (Runway 34, Thank God), Shahid Kapoor (Jersey) and Tiger Shroff (Heropanti 2) also followed the suit and disappointed their fans.Film trade analyst Taran Adarsh called the year “disastrous” for Bollywood. He said, “If there was one hit, it was followed by 10 flops. The ratio of hits and flops was alarmingly high this year.” He also blamed the failure of movies on “outdated content” and lack of “wholesome entertainment”. He reasoned that audience today do not go to the theaters even for the biggest stars because of their easy accessibility on social media. “You see Ranveer Singh at FIFA World Cup, you see him doing various photoshoots, his bold photoshoots are flashed everywhere, you see him here there and everywhere. So, when his movie comes out which doesn’t even have the right content, then people are not interested in going to the cinema halls. These airport appearances, and this overexposure of stars through social media is also somewhere responsible for low footfall in the cinema halls.”A bit of blame for some of these films failing to earn profit lies in their sky-high budget, most of which is mostly spent on an actor’s fees, rather than increasing the production value. Rathi said, “The fees of actors have become obnoxious.”He pointed out how the money which could have been put into the production of a film went into the actor’s pocket. So, he suggested, “Whoever is the anchor for the box office draw, be it the actor, director or music director, should get the king share of the profit. We need to devise transferring mechanisms that ensure they are stealthy across the value chain. For every movie that works, the actor, director, producer, and distributor should make money, rather than one individual in the value chain earning a supernatural profit. That’s the only way to make this business sustainable in the long run.”This year, the films that drew people to the cinema halls were RRR, KGF 2, Brahmastra, Charlie 777, The Kashmir Files, all of which offered something different to the audience. Their choice of films was dominated by the story of the films rather than who starred in them. So, filmmakers now need to respect writers and directors more than ever before.“We need to give a lot more respect to storytellers, directors and writers of the film to create great experiences. We need to give credit to the distribution system and exhibition sector which prices and programmes the content in a way that brings the highest footfalls,” Akshaye Rathi said.Rathi also explained that the Hindi film industry is suffering because it has ‘alienated’ the common man. He opined, “As a Hindi film industry, we have alienated ourselves drastically from the common man’s sensibilities and emotions and thought processes. We have become elitist, urban and disconnected. As an industry, we need to bring back our focus on catering to the sentiments of common people, something which the southern fraternities do very well.”Now, all the expectations are set for 2023, which will have the release of three Shah Rukh Khan films (Pathaan, Dunki, Jawan), two Salman Khan movies (Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan, Tiger 3), a Karan Johar directorial (Rocky Aur Rani Ki Prem Kahani), and a film from Bollywood’s best performer of 2022, Kartik Aaryan (Shehzada). Rathi expects nothing less than “Fireworks at the box office in 2023.” Only time will tell.