Rs. 400 Crores At Stake!

The most crucial phase is about to begin!

Come April and the film industry looks forward to the revenue graph show an upward trend. No wonder, you find producers targeting their films during summer vacations, from mid-April to mid-June.

Like every year, there's a lot riding in these five months [this year, August should also be pretty busy]. It won't be wrong to state that approx. Rs. 400 crores is at stake in these months, with several biggies competing with each other to catch the attention of moviegoers.

The past three months have been anything but bliss for the entertainment industry. The tally of flops continues to mount week after week. But the situation can reverse, starting with LUCKY, MUMBAI XPRESS, WAQT and KAAL in April.

Almost every industry person is hoping [and praying!] that the dry spell comes to an end and it pours hits this summer!

Flops Dominate And How!

I was just compiling the chart of Hits and Misses of last 25 years [check the chart below] and the one thing I realized was that the industry was seeing far better days in the early 1980s than the 1990s. The ratio of hits dominated the charts then, but with actors suddenly concentrating on 50 to 70 projects at a time, doing as many as five/six shifts a day [that's right!] and producers in a tearing hurry to assemble a massive star cast for their films, the content took a complete backseat.

All of a sudden, the ratio of flops started to escalate and post-1995, the hits are as scarce as the post-monsoon showers during winter in Mumbai. The industry has slowly woken up to the fact that it's not stars alone that can lure the audiences to the cinema halls. The success of PAGE 3 [with no stars] and the failure of TANGO CHARLIE [with four A-list stars] clearly indicate that the content is the king!

Meanwhile, take a look at the success-failure scenario of Bollywood of last 25 years:-