Kudos to Raaz-2, Slumdog Crorepati & Dev D
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The 1st Qr of 2009 is over and while the good news is that there was a lot of variety in the kind of Bollywood movies released, in terms of success there were only 3 movies which can be actually called successful in the true sense. The range of movies varied from mainstream biggies like CC2C, Jai Veeru, Aa dekhen Zara etc, small movies like Firaaq,Barah Aana,The Stoneman Murders etc and movies which fall in between the mainstream biggies and the small movies in terms of budget and the number of release centre’s like Dev D,Gulaal,Luck By Chance etc. In all there were some 30 odd regular releases in the quarter (taking only the straight listed films in consideration and avoiding the so called unlisted movies and the various soft porn and dubbed movies the actual count is 31) and the actual successful films are just 3-Raaz-The Mystery Continues ( Raaz-TMC hereon), Slumdog Crorepati(hereon referred to as SDC ) and Dev D.
No this post is not a review of any of these 3 movies. We have already discussed the merits and demerits of these 3 movies in length. But yes considering these movies represent the successful 10 % (of the entire lot that released in Q 1’09), we need to not only appreciate these movies for their success but also briefly look at how & why they have been successful. Lets first talk about Raaz-2. Well we all now the kind of films Vishesh Films has been making – typically small/medium budget kind of movies with good music. This movie again did not prove to be an exception in this respect. Director Mohit Suri had already shot into prominence with movies like Zeher, Kalyug, Woh Lamhe & Awarapan and the movie had the trusted Emran Hashmi along with Kangna Ranaut ( of course it also had Adhyayan Suman 
). Right from the beginning the promos showed that the movie had great music ( Raju Singh,Gaurav Dasgupta, Toshi,Sharib Sabri) and the catchy title reminded people of the highly successful Raaz.
So the people went at large and had a good time watching Raaz-TMC. Of course not many people felt it was really scary and many even felt that the climax was tame. But all said and done the solid promotion worked and Vishesh Films had a hit in their hands. On the day that Raaz-TMC released, there was another movie that got released- SDC. The Hindi version of SDM which released alongside across the country did quite well initially as the movie already had got noticed due to its popularity abroad and the series of awards it had started to sweep everywhere. But the actual success of the movie got noticed only much later i.e. after SDM swept away the Oscar Awards. In fact not only did shows of the movie get increased in most centre’s, in a lot of places where the movie had completed its initial run it was re-released and made even more money.
And then we finally come to Dev D, a movie which had a lot of fan following among the youth but was not considered to be all that powerful to make a strong impact at the box office. But surprisingly the movie not only managed to attract the youth, but it also managed to gain in popularity as days passed on. The results are there to see. It’s become a multiplex hit and as I write this post, the movie has crossed 50 days and is still playing in select multiplexes across the country. Considering that these days most of the movies make the maximum money in the first week of its release and that its tough for even a mainstream blockbuster to survive more than a few weeks, the success of Dev D is all the more commendable.
So these 3 movies had their audience and were helped by the kind of promotion it had. Be it a catchy title and a hit song like ‘Mahi Mahi’ or the Oscar Awards or ‘Emotional Atyachar’, each of these movies had something in them which helped the target audience identify with the movie and enable the movie’s success at the box office. That brings to the question- were all the other 28 releases bad? Well certainly not, some of them were definitely good and even critically appreciated but where they failed was in connecting to the audience. All said and done a 10 % success ratio is very scary indeed for the industry. We must need more and more successes both in the form of big & small/medium movies. After all a big movie’s success enables the production banner to fund many more small/medium movies. With the producer’s vs multiplexes strike supposedly starting from April 4th, there aren’t too many releases scheduled in April. Let’s hope the forthcoming releases in May and June turn out to be good and most of them manage to connect to their target audience and become successful.
Note- I have considered SDC as a Hindi version of SDM & not a dubbed movie as otherwise the success % falls even below 10 %.
Moreover this post is only about box office success and not about how good or bad a film is.
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
good detailed info there…..i think the recession coupled with limited thinking in terms of story and marketing played their parts in such a low percentage of success
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Is it possible to know what was the exact status of Luck By Chance.Was a flop or did it cover its cost?I loved It.It deserved to be a hit.Still cannot understand why it was not.
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@ Jibin- I dont really think recession had much of an effect in case of most of the movies.yes to some extent it would have impacted some of the small releases.I mean if 4 small movies release on a single friday then obviously people would find it difficult to watch most of them in this recession period.In all other cases it was mostly either a case of poor content or poor promotion.
@ Anindya- I liked LBC myself.But @ the box office it was a flop.A lot of reasons were given most prominent being the lay man did not understand the industry jokes etc.I guess it just didnt attract a lot of people thats it.
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What is the status of Delhi6? I heard it did some decent business.
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^ yeah I would be interested to know that too
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nice detailed post sethu, with all the necessary disclaimers in place…
what abt 13B and Gulaal? were they absolute flops?
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great detailing sethu! u r so good at this, sometimes i feel u should be paid for it. ;-)
keep the shit flying!
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@ Cliff,Faraaz- Delhi 6 is technically a flop because of the high budget & the high price it was sold at.So overall the movie did not make money for everyone across the chain.
@ Jha- Gulaal is a flop.But whether Zee Limelight made money or not is something I’ll try to find out soon.13 B is also a flop but Big Pictures has not lost any money on it as the budget was on the lower side.And the good news is that Yavarum Nalam the tamil version of 13 B is a big hit.
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Magik- haan yaar won’t mind getting paid for this.After all nothing beats getting paid for something one likes to do
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which is the biggest flop of 2009?
1)Delhi 6 2)CC2C 3)Gulal 4)LBC
which one among these?
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I don’t think Gulaal is a huge flop…what was its budget?…if Dev.D had a budget of 6-7 crores, it should be less for Gulaal unless u take time value of money considering it has been made over half a decade…:D…
13B also had a Tamil version…guess that has done well to save the producers…
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@ Girish- obviously the answer to your question is CC2C.It had a very big budget & also sold at a high cost.
@ jitaditya- I’ve never mentioned Gulaal as a huge flop.I’ve said its a flop but I feel Zee Limelight has probably recovered its money.Will try to confirm the same.Already mentioned in comment # 8 about 13 B’s success in Tamil-Yavarum Nalam.
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Sethu –
Where do you come across data for your analysis? I was curious since I thought production houses in India don’t really put out these figures like the ones here in the US do.
If you look at a site like BoxOfficeMojo.com you can see box office figures for these films but I wasn’t sure how accurate these were …
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@ Savio- There are some sites like bollywoodhungam.com,boxofficeindia.com,ibosindianetwork.com etc which one can refer to.But of course sometimes the figures given may not be accurate.In that case I do check with some industry sources to get the correct details.
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Anurag makes it to the hit list!The world is waking up!finally!:)
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