Is “money babies” too disturbing an image? Oh well, I’m sticking with it! It’s thematic and correct. (as always, figures from bollywoodhungama)
There’s always a bit of a delay in the filmmakers realizing when trends shift. Bahubali was a big hit, and then it took a year for all the imitators to be made and release, and in the meantime the public was just kind of over it. But this time it almost feels like they were ahead of the trend? Or maybe this is just a type of film that has always been consistently available? What I am saying is that this kind of warmhearted middle-class location specific story was a kind of under the ground hit last year (Bareilly Ki Barfi, Shubh Mangal Saavdhan) and this year has suddenly burst forth as major blockbusters (Andhadhun, Stree, now Badhai Ho). If it has unglamorous character actors, a dingy crowded set, and a not-traditionally-attractive hero, it will make All The Money. Especially this week, especially Badhai Ho.
And here is where I talk about Running Shaadi again. Running Shaadi exactly fits this trend, and is a wonderful movie. And yet, no one saw it. I blame the promotions mostly. The people who made the film made a wonderful film. But then the distributors or whoever decided no one would want to see that movie, so they promoted it as a silly comedy between two guys and a website instead of as a sweet love story between a Bihari guy who just wants to do the right thing and a spoiled Punjabi college student.
Now though, finally, these movies are being made and are being promoted and the audience is finding them!
Which brings me to this weeks releases and Badhai Ho‘s Global Domination. In America, $4,855 per screen!!!!!!!!!! That’s Khan numbers, is what that is. Well, used to be Khan numbers, 2-3 years ago. Now I think I should just call them “the per screen for the highest budget and most promoted films of the year”, but “Khan film” is so much snappier. Oh, and on 107 screens! So, definitely benefiting from all the films that came before in terms of screen count. That’s why I was able to see it, my local theater was playing Namaste England and then literally hours before the showtimes, suddenly the switched to playing Badhai Ho.
In Canada, where the box office is generally stronger plus North Indian set films do really well, the per screen is even better. $10,660 per screen!!!!! In Australia, where box office is also strong and so are northern films, $12,000 per screen! Which also, by the way, made it the #9 film in all of Australia this week. In New Zealand, it was #6, at $8,000 per screen. But it’s the UK that really impressed me, the UK market has been falling like crazy lately, and they were one of the first major overseas markets in recent years. But Badhaai Ho brought them back in a big way, $4,900 per screen!
And then, on the other side of the scale, we have Namaste England. Poor Namaste England! In America, it only released on 59 screens. But then, was it really as big a movie as it felt? Thinking back, it’s not so much that it had a big promotion campaign with a lot of money spent or anything like that. It only benefited from the celebrity connections, Parineeti and Arjun flying in and out of places from location shooting, burying the name in our minds. Plus famous friends tweeting trailers and so on. But I don’t think I saw a single trailer in theaters for it, while I saw the Badhai Ho trailer over and over again. Not saying Namaste could have done better with different promotions, but it makes me think the distributor or someone along the line knew it was a dog and decided not to waste the money. Anyway, on only 59 screens in America, it made $745 per screen. Ouch! $1,300 per screen in Canada, $1,000 per screen in the UK, $800 per screen in Australia. Did the best in New Zealand, where they must be starved for romance considering their response to this and Loveyatri, $2,200 per screen. Oh dear.
Oh, and the other interesting thing, Kayamkulam Kochunni, Nivin’s movie, is still doing well (for a Malayalam film) in week two, $2,500 per screen! Yaaaaaaay NIVIN!
dontcallitbollywood 
In India we felt like there’s an overkill of namaste promotion.
They were on every interview,every reality show, every channel imaginable.
Also there was huuuuuuuuuuge promotions dome all over – multi cities , mall visits ,celebrities tweets ,contests the works.
Therefore it was a biiig surprise that it didn’t get opening day numbers
The bad trailer and arjun kapoor pissed off audience I felt
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Huh, how interesting! And yet they didn’t bother to put a trailer in any theater I went to in America in the past month.
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When I saw a crowded screening for a 10:30 am show last Friday for Badhaai Ho, I knew it was going to be a hit. It must have been sold out in the evenings all weekend.
It’s a movie that hits that sweet spot — family film but with a little edge. And how about Ayushmann Khurrana having back to back 100 Crore films?! Wow! I’m so happy for him. He has been picking GOOD scripts unlike Arjun Kapoor, who can’t seem to find his way out of a paper bag. Just saw Andhadhun today, and it is really good. Such a script!!
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Yeah, based on the past few years, Ayushmann has turned into a more reliable box office performer than Akshay. Not necessary record breaking, but every film is solid.
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Ayushmann is making a niche for himself with the middle class-non noble issues(noble middle class issues are taken by Akshay) with sexual subtexts. More power to him. Hope he doesn’t start making star films with YRF or Dharma now that he has made money. Raj Kumar, Ayushman, Tapsee, Sanya Malhotra,Radhika Apte along with character artistes-seems like a parallel flourishing industry is running in Hindi. More power to all of them.
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And based on box office, people are a bit sick of noble middle-class issues.
If the box office keeps up this way, Color Yellow and the other smaller studios, and Rajkumar and Ayushmann and the rest, could end up becoming the main industry and YRF and Dharma the parallel.
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I wonder how Running Shaadi would do if it was released now, when both Amit and Tapsee are bigger names, and people started liking this kind of movies.
Nivin tweeted this:
But I asked my “bollywood” contact in Italy and she hasn’t heard about any Kayamkulam Kochunni shows, and I can’t find any information about KK in Poland. So it looks like they just wrote all european countries on the poster without thinking about it.
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Or else they are releasing them in little community centers and stuff, not regular theaters where normal people could hear about it.
I think Running Shaadi would do really well now, and so would A Gentleman, if they got the right kind of promotion. Focused on the story, the real story, instead of the stars. It’s so hard for promoters to just trust the film and sell it for what it is instead of what they think people want it to be!
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I checked with my mallu contact in Poland, its soon to be released… only one show.
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Thank you 🙂
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AK had a banner 2017 and now a banner 2018. Both times using the strategy of releasing movies in the lull between major holiday seasons, thus not competing with khan or banner releases, and reaping the rewards accordingly.
He seems to have been at the forefront of this trend of story, script, and character driven movies set in specific milieus, what with Vicky Donor and DLKH.
I’m excited for the second act that actresses like Tabu and Neena Gupta are getting in all this. Iirc, NG was also in another recent release… VdW?
Yeah the extremely trite proclamations from Arjun in the NE trailer, esp the one about “Pyaar”, was enough to turn me off from that film. I’ll see it on streaming instead. At least Loveyatri was openly a 90s throwback, whereas this one claims to be a modern update to NL but instead becomes a 90s retread layered upon some feminist leanings.
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These throwback films always seem to end up just remembering the simple bits from the originals. I found Manmarziyaan much more of a 90s throwback, in that it really dealt with complicated emotions and love stories and all of that, not just declarations about “Pyaar”. It’s like they are just doing the highlight real of those films and forgetting all the tricky bits, like how in Namaste London Akshay didn’t come like a conqueror but like a humble suitor, he actually respected Katrina’s autonomy more than her own father, and that is part of why she loved him. Not to mention that there was a lot of explicit talk of first generation versus second generation diaspora issues and how that was part of the urge to safely marry Kat off to a nice Punjabi farmer.
On Wed, Oct 24, 2018 at 1:31 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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