Reality check Word-of-mouth is last word

This article was last updated on April 16, 2022

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Reality check Word-of-mouth is last word

The June to August quarter opened with Housefull 3 doing near-houseful business in the first few days. However, while its production budget naturally soared (for prestige's sake, the next film in a franchise must always be bigger, see!) the film's lifetime collection in India fell Rs. 10 crore short of Housefull 2's Rs. 116 crore despite 1100 more screens!

What went wrong with the film, which cost a hefty Rs 85 crore (as against Housefull 2's Rs. 50 crore!) and was technically a loser to all but the producer, was, in effect, the overconfidence in the brand. This led to shoddy scripting for a big-budget comedy. Music, which had been the hallmark of the earlier two films, was a downer here, and as we all know, this franchise was known for good music.

Sultan was, easily and understandably, the biggest hit of this quarter. Salman Khan today is enough to rake in a minimum 120 crore on purely his own steam. Add the Yash Raj Films clout, a solid story and script and Anushka Sharma, and 300 crore was not any distant dream, as last year's Bajrangi Bhaijaan so conclusively proved.

The film did manage to sail past this mark on merit, but the fact that at the end of the day it was another love story with personal redemption and was, in that sense, predictable, made it lag behind Bajrangi Bhaijaan, whose emotional canvas was far bigger.

An additional reason, again, was Sultan's music. Though of high standard, it was not used as cerebrally and most of the songs were cluttered in the first half, that too as non-lip-sync items that were nowhere as well noticed vis-a-vis Bajrangi's hits 'Selfie', 'Bhar Do Jholi' or 'The Chicken Song'.

Rustom did the fastest 100 crore among Akshay Kumar's movies. What we now fathom from the superlative collections is simply that Akshay has established himself (with Neeraj Pandey, only a producer this time) as a brand who is best in movies with a patriotic angle, especially if the release is shrewdly-timed (Independence Day week this time and Republic Day week for Baby and Airlift).

Everything worked right for Rustom right from its launch. It was intelligently positioned, right from the beginning, as the dramatized story of Captain Nanavaty that had made headlines in 1959, highlighted as the third collaboration between Akshay and Neeraj (after Special 26 and Baby), and it hinted at a patriotic angle. The trailer was launched sans any fanfare- but created all the needed anticipation! As Akshay quipped, the producers saved money on excessive marketing!

So was Rustom a patriot, traitor or murderer? That tag-line caught the imagination-and it intrigued audience about how a patriot or a traitor was connected with a crime of passion? Since the original film made on the story, the 1964 Yeh Raaste Hain Pyar Ke, had not done too well, the writers mixed the story with another (real) one on an old Naval arms scam, and this cocktail, along with the somewhat flippant court sequences, won over the audience. A super-sensible production budget (Rs 40 crore) synergized with the adroit marketing and the very strong word-of-mouth!

Coming up a cropper, however, was Mohenjo Daro, the rival release. True, the film's release date had been decided before Rustom came in, but the over-confident production cost (with fairly tacky results too!), a clumsy and over-confident marketing strategy, a fat-headed script that had no novelty besides the spurious ones of the historical location and timeframe and poor music helped this one capsize big time! The strongly negative vibe for the trailer and finally terrible word-of-mouth were the two last nails in its coffin!

An unmitigated qualitative and commercial catastrophe, it not only boosted Rustom's fortunes in the first two weeks but also showed yet again that content was king and not the superstar! And that stars did not make films, but the reverse was true!

Reality check Word-of-mouth is last word

In stark contrast was the small but near-perfect Happy Bhag Jayegi, whose trailer wowed us! However, the lack of star-value got the film a low opening of less than Rs 2.5 crore during the post-Rustom euphoria. Even the music (very apt for the film, but devoid of any chartbuster) did not work.

What worked, however, as with all good films, was terrific word-of-mouth. From Monday, the film collected progressively higher numbers till Thursday! And in week two, this clean, wholesome and completely non-gimmicky love story actually got more screens and shows!

This was, however, emphatically not the case with the three Balaji offerings-Udta Punjab, Great Grand Masti and A Flying Jatt. The first two were leaked online well before release, but since when did such online leaks significantly affect true cinematic business? In the '80s and early '90s, it was said that a good film shown on legal (as well as pirated) videocassettes actually worked as a trailer to pull in the audience into the theatres for a repeat watch, like Tezaab, Dil et al.

But when a film does not have what it takes, nothing can really save it from a lethal or negative word-of-mouth. Udta Punjab opened well because of the controversy presented as a free gift by Pehlaj Nihalani. But the true censors of this expletive-ridden film were the ever-judicious audience-the film just failed to sustain ground in week one despite critics singing hosannas about it.

Great Grand Masti, that sorry mess of a movie, was a project that should not have been green-lit at all. Neither here (adult comedy) nor there (horror comedy), it got a perfect fodder in the online leak to provide an excuse for its calamitous opening and rapid oblivion!

The first half of A Flying Jatt, for all its illogic, was refreshing in parts. But the film came hurtling down post-interval, and it was only Tiger Shroff who salvaged the film in the first four days at the counters, because of his huge following among kids. But if kids wanted to watch their favourite hero, they soon cottoned on that they were better off watching his earlier two films again!

All three films suffered from substandard music, which acted as an additional liability for the last film in particular, but overall, it was yet again the skewed budgeting that undid them all. The super-tacky VFX of AFJ and the technical shortcomings should at least have sent alarm bells ringing at Balaji, which even the screwball script clearly did not! And now, Balaji must do a rethink if it has to survive in a field that has consigned so many giants like Disney UTV to history!

Dishoom could not make up its mind whether to be a gritty espionage subject (which would have worked wonders) or a racy action comedy a la the Dhoom franchise, and just hung in limbo as a result! It failed to muster decent figures (Rs 69.5 cr. in India) considering its budget of Rs 65 crore. Once again, the film proved that no star, not even a GenY big name like Varun Dhawan, could pull a film to success, and two, that there were limits to a movie's business potential for the new hotties on the block who were not yet superstars.

Madaari proved that a sincere effort could come undone with flaws in concept and execution. The bland and over-simplistic climax and several other unconvincing sequences made this wannabe A Wednesday! come a cropper-after all, audiences expected much more from Nishikant kamat and Irrfan Khan individually, and here there were together!

As for TE3N, right from the weird name to the dark content, the film was a total put-off and the audience was simply not interested in what this thriller was all about. The film got the dubious distinction of being Amitabh Bachchan's lowest-ever opener!

Raman Raghav 2.0, easily the most warped movie to come out of Mumbai, was classic Anurag Kashyap-anathema to audiences that wanted a decent watch. With a sister offering her body to a brother and other revolting sequences, the lethal word-of-mouth made the film collect a measly Rs 1.1 crore all-India on opening day.

Article written by staff at Bollywood Hungama. Read more

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