Bollywood bleeding at the box-office

After some big box-office debacles, Bollywood is bleeding and distributors are seeing red. Pressure is now on producers to avoid release clashes. Bollywood has apparently lost revenue to the tune of around Rs1,000 crore last year with almost 90 per cent of the films flopping at the box office.

“Movies likes Kites, Raavan, Guzaarish, Khelein Hum Jee Jaan She, Action Replayy have all failed at the box office. Many have lost their money on these films. Even Tees Maar Khan saw a drastic fall in collections. It is also a major reason why we didn’t have a major new year release this year,” says trade analyst Taran Adarsh.

Distributors state that they’ll not allow producers to clash with each other at the box office as they don’t want to lose money this year as well. “We don’t want two major Bollywood releases in one week. We are trying to convince the producer about this,” says a distributor.

According to trade analyst Amod Mehra, 110 films flopping out of 130 films released last year will only bring down a film’s price tags. “The industry has lost to a close of  approximately Rs1,000 crore this year, with 50% of the losses being borne by companies (studio houses). I don’t think that we can afford to have such a bloodbath at the box-office this year as well,” says Amod.

Sources state that the producers have decided not to clash with each other till June this year. “They all want to have a fair chance where one big production is not put up against the other. We have had many meetings regarding that. We cannot afford humunguous losses this year,” says a prominent filmmaker.