Oh shoot, I failed at a clever title. Oh well, there’s always next week. Something about playing Holi with money or something, that will work. (as always, figures from bollywoodhungama)
A large part of this is just savvy release decisions. This is a dead weekend, there is no new Hindi movie out, Gully Boy is slowing down, and Luka Chuppi was never going to have legs. Putting the movie out now almost guaranteed adding more screens in week two and having a nice clear solid run. Especially for a movie like this that would grow in word of mouth. If A Gentleman had been produced by Red Chillies, or Running Shaadi, or Raabta, or Bhavesh Joshi, or any of the other films that I loved in theaters and which left after 6 days, they could have had the same decent run. Add on the lowkey last minute promotional campaign that was very word of mouth friendly, that said “come in and check out the film, no pressure, let us know if you like it”. And a genre that is friendly to repeat watching. And a just straight well-made and well-acted film. So, Go Red Chillies!!!!
Happy, how much Badla is supported by public opinion 🙂
Margaret, wish you an enjoyable flight and then enjoyable stay in LA 🙂
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Thank you!
On Wed, Mar 20, 2019 at 3:33 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Go, Red Chillies! They won best VFX, and Katrina Kaif won best supporting actor/female, at the Zee awards yesterday. Let’s see how the Filmfare awards turn out. Hoping the fact that Shah Rukh is hosting means there’s an, ahem, good chance he might win best actor, popular. So many good performances this year, I know. But I think Bauua was special. Not that I’m biased. 😉
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I hope he wins something too! anything to keep him acting, the more successful Badla is, the less he needs to go back to acting.
On Wed, Mar 20, 2019 at 6:26 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Unlikely that he will win anything. Indian awards only reward hit movies which takes away the whole purpose. He didn’t even get anything for Fan, which was easily the performance of the year, so it’s pointless to expect anything. They will make up all kinds of stupid categories and reward Ranbir, Ranveer, Ayushman, and Vicky Kaushal. No one left behind, haha.
The Zee awards were yesterday and they made up all kinds of categories and gave awards to Ranbir, Ranveer, Ayushman for the male categories and Sonam, Deepika and Alia for the female ones. Yeah, Sonam actually picked up an award for Padman. What even?
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Badla is a turning point for Red Chillies. It’s making good money and will make up for losses, if any, from Zero. Bard of Blood has also wrapped filming so I imagine a promo or something should probably come soon. TV probably works faster than movies do.
SRK seems to be taking it easy. He just came back from a ski vacation in France. Maybe his interest in acting has declined because he doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to do anything whereas most of the other actors are announcing multiple movies. Akshay, Salman and Ajay Devgan have 4 or 5 movies each coming up!! It’s ridiculous. Even Aamir has announced his (unnecessary) remake.
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Maybe he has just worn himself out? You just mentioned Fan, that was only 3 years ago, in the past 3 years he did Fan, Raees, Dear Zindagi, Jab Harry Met Sejal, and Zero. All of them (except maybe Dear Zindagi) exhausting emotional deep roles. Could be he has just used up his emotional reservoirs. I can’t think of another Indian actor who has had a similarly draining series of roles in such a short time.
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Maybe the audience wants SRK to enter the married” phase of his career? Though both DZ and Fan are “married” roles/performances. Why didn’t Raees do better? It seems like it would be right in the BW pocket. Raees not being a Blockbuster is far more telling of his status than JHMS or Fan or Zero, which are all very experimental in nature.
It’s like to see him as the patriarch in a multistarrer, ala Anil in DDD, but in a historical or mythological property. Like in Dilwale, he can be paired against an age appropriate matriarch like Madhuri, Tabu, maybe Vidya (not kajol… too much baggage and expectations). The scale of such properties works with his uberstardom if it’s a multistarrer, I think. At least for people like me, who didn’t grow up on his 90s movies, it would.
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I wonder why he didn’t get the Anil Kapoor role in Takht? I am sure Anil will be amazing, but that is the exact role you are describing for Shahrukh.
On Wed, Mar 20, 2019 at 8:56 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Why would he do a patriarch role? They are side roles and they are boring. Anil hasn’t mattered in a significant way since the 80s so he can do those types of roles. Obviously SRK would not.
Raees had a fantastic opening even in a clash with a younger actor. But at the end of the day, it was a very Muslim movie and we are living in bhakt times. The director was known for a very controversial movie like Parzania. Even so, Raees still made money.
Fact is that for his next, he has to choose a safe movie with a safe and traditional subject because most experiments generally don’t work in BW. If he insists on an experiment, then he needs to take it to Netflix.
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