This year was full of surprises at the Bollywood box office. Filmmakers pushed the envelope to break new grounds, and with the success of small-budget films it’s become clear that a new era is emerging without Khans and A-listers. While 2018 started on a good note with Padmaavat, Sanju, and Baaghi 2 raking in big bucks in the first quarter, star-power quickly faded with a string of flops.
Big-budget films such as Welcome to New York starring Sonakshi Sinha, Diljit Dosanjh, Karan Johar, Namaste England with Parineeti Chopra and Arjun Kapoor, Fanney Khan with Aishwarya Rai and Anil Kapoor, and Batti Gul Meter Chalu starring Shahid Kapoor and Shraddha Kapoor crashed with a thud. Even Saif Ali Khan’s Bazaar and Kaalakaandi turned out to be duds at the box office.
Salman Khan’s Eid release Race 3 was another flop but the biggest surprise was when Aamir Khan and Amitabh Bachchan-starrer Thugs of Hindostan plummeted badly. The Rs 300-crore film made just Rs 145.29 crore, according to film trade analyst Taran Adarsh. “Small-budget films have done good business this year while films with huge star cast, which were expected to do well, flopped at the box office,” says BH Basha, a distributor from Mysuru.
The saving grace for 2018 has been small-budget films such as Baadhai Ho, Stree, Andhadhun and Raazi that garnered unprecedented acclaim and revenue. “This has been a good year for the industry. Smaller films with good content have done really well. Surprisingly, the big films this year that released during Eid and Diwali did not do well. During these festivals, films normally do good business. Smaller films that starred Rajkummar Rao and Ayushmann Khurrana touched the Rs 100-130 crore mark. This has never happened before,” says Ramesh Sippy, film distributor in Mumbai.
Badhaai Ho, which featured Ayushmann Khurrana, Neena Gupta and Sanya Malhotra in leading roles, was a love story about a middle-aged couple based in Delhi. But distributors claim that the movie has done well not just in places like Delhi and Punjab but across the country and is still running in theatres. The film has entered the coveted Rs 300-crore club and its success has been resounding in the film industry. “Small budget films always existed in the Hindi film industry. Earlier, it was called ‘art cinema’ but now art and commerce have come together and we call it ‘content cinema’,” says Stree director Amar Kaushik.
He also adds that another factor that’s helping small-budget films do well are the streaming platforms. “People are now watching quality content on Amazon Prime and Netflix. Audiences are exposed to good content compared to earlier where we had to get pirated copies of foreign cinema. Thus, the (Hindi) films that have content, which is internationally competitive, do well with the audiences,” he adds.
Other films that did well were Akshay Kumar’s Padman, Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety and Rani Mukerji’s comeback Hichki. But it was Rao’s Stree, a horror comedy, that turned a new leaf with its massive earning of Rs 130 crore with a budget of Rs 23 crore only.
These movies were neither typical action-packed films nor masala and commercial entertainers yet they managed to rake in multiple crores each. So has star power waned? Kaushik is quick to answer: “We still need big names to make period dramas. But now content has taken precedence over stars. Earlier, filmmakers just needed stars to make films. But now stars also need to act well for films to work.”
Sippy cautiously adds that it might be early to ignore star power. “This year, the number of hits and box-office collections are much higher. However, three big films are yet to release in December,” he adds. In the final month of the year, films such as Kedarnath, Zero and Simmba will seal the fate of big-budget movies.