Yeh picture hit hai ya superhit...?

In 1997 I was staying in a small town near Nagpur. For every new movie that would release me and my family would pile on in the car and drive down to Nagpur city because our town had only one, extremely shady theater. Big movies (Border), small movies (Tamanna), dubbed movies (Sapnay), good movies (Virasat), bad movies (Himalay Putra), serious movies (Mrityudand), masala movies (Judwaa), thrillers (Gupt), comedies (Yes Boss), romance (Pardes) - we saw them ALL! Most of these movies were decent hits but none could bring in so many viewers that it would be houseful for days. But one enterprising theater owner had a brain wave. He decided to run an older everybody-has-seen-it film once again. He gave a one of those 5cmx2cm black&white ads in the paper, which we saw. We had seen the movie at least 5 times in the last 2 years but the attraction of watching it on the big screen once again was a temptation too hard to resist! So off we went wondering how many other crazy people like us will turn up.

It was a houseful. The movie - Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jaayenge.

That is what I call a BLOCKBUSTER. There were talks that the movie had grossed more than Rs. 50 crores (a huge sum at that time) at the box office and you knew it was right. Even after 2 years you could see it in the full theaters. Tickets didn't cost more than Rs. 60 and there were much fewer theaters - it was just the volumes that did it.

Now I go into jazzy multiplexes 2 weeks after Ghajini releases, pay Rs. 250 on the ticket and Rs. 100 on the pop-corn, look around at 60% occupancy and watch this 3 hr long piece of crap - which is supposedly breaking all box-office records! Rs. 200 crores?? And expected to make more? How come it doesn't feel like that? And it's not just Ghajini. All the so-called "superhits" of the last few years (Singh Is Kinng, Race, Fanaa, OSO, Welcome, RNBDJ, Dhoom 2 et al) fail to impress. Where are these revenues of crores coming from? How much do overseas revenue contribute? Is it fair to convert dollars into rupees and inflate the number? Why isn't inflation taken into account? Is the theater owner making any money at all?

Nobody is answering these uncomfortable questions. Everyone feels proud that Bollywood is now an industry but where is the accountability? Or has it learned the art of manipulating numbers from the corporates! The number of screens have increased, so have the prices on each ticket. Naturally each person is now contributing more into the revenue pie than previously. And that can't be the only criteria to call a movie a superhit. Volume, yield, line profit - everything should be included when deciding whether a movie is hit or not. We don't even have an official source or body which tracks the box-office performance of Bollywood movies. Only some unofficial bodies which too term movies a hit or a miss in a sometimes arbitrary manner. Incidentally, according to boxofficeindia.com Ghajini has so far made Rs. 90 crores in revenues (domestic or total - its not clear). In either scenario it is far from the imaginary Rs. 200 crores.