Chasing the golden goose

With Salman Khan’s Ek Tha Tiger poised to smash records, Postnoon finds out what has changed in the past few years that is setting the cash registers ringing

The race to be the new king of box office in Bollywood is at its prime now. With Salman Khan, Shah Rukh Khan and Aamir Khan continuing to outdo each other every year, it’s anybody’s guess who’ll reign supreme in the end. Aamir Khan, Madhavan, Sharman Joshi starrer 3 Idiots, which collected Rs.202 crore nett in 2009, might have set the bar too high for others, but three of Salman Khan’s recent films Dabangg, Ready and Bodyguard managed to find place in the elite Rs.100 crore club in Bollywood. Shah Rukh Khan isn’t far behind either. So what does it take to smash the Rs.200 crore mark at box office?

Over the past few years, productions houses in Bollywood have been quite careful when it comes to planning a film’s release. Today, there’s absolutely no chance that a Salman Khan’s film will clash at the box office with a Shah Rukh Khan or Aamir Khan’s film. It hurts both the parties and to put it in simple terms, it’s bad business. No matter what the film’s content is, publicity and advertising of big budget films featuring A list actors begins months in advance. More than any other regional film industry in India, Hindi film industry has figured out a way to exploit every possible medium to reach out to a wider audience ahead of a film’s release. Right from the launch of the first look, to giving interviews and touring several cities promoting their film, stars these days haven’t been leaving any stone unturned to pull the audiences to theatres.

This is the age of multiplexes, especially in the west and northern part of India. Five years ago, the multiplex boom was just picking up, but today, ticket sales at multiplexes account for bulk of theatrical collections of most Bollywood films. Today, Salman Khan’s Ek Tha Tiger is releasing in more than 200 screens in Delhi/NCR region and across the world, the film will be screened in more than 3,300 screens which is phenomenal. Getting a huge release, especially during a long festival weekend, is like winning a lottery for production houses.

Perhaps, there’s nothing much to discuss about a film’s content especially for such big budget films. No matter what Salman Khan or Shah Rukh does on screen, there’ll always be people to watch them onscreen.

So what does it take to be in the `200 crore club? A gargantuan release of any of the three Khans, along with a stroke of luck might do the trick. The content is just icing on the cake.

Tags: bollywood, box office, Ek Tha Tiger, featured, full-image

Category: Bollywood, Cinema