Race 3 – Thugs Of Hindostan: Is Social Media A Blessing Or A Curse For The Movies?

In today’s digital era, social sites and netizens play an important role in deciding the fate of the movies at the box office. Especially, no one can forget the imprudent bashing of Salman Khan’s Race 3 and Aamir Khan’s Thugs Of Hindostan.

In the age of Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, various diehard fan clubs and fan pages exist online. Most annoying part is the blistering attack of fans on rival star’s movies, irrespective of the content, whether good or bad. This year’s Race 3 and Thugs Of Hindostan, saw same misfortune coming its way, as both got trolled heavily by netizens. One can say that those two are most trolled and criticized movies in a recent time. Even though the content was not as expected, both the movie suffered too much of bashing. Even Shah Rukh Khan in an interview with Telegraph said that some people are being little too harsh about Thugs…

During the era of Superstar Rajesh Khanna and Amitabh Bachchan, the things such as memes and social media were inexistent. The classic example is of Sholay, which was released in 1975. The movie received highly negative reviews upon its release and was also described as a disaster, by some critics. But the positive word-of-mouth helped the movie to sustain, and eventually broke several records. And if it would have released today, in a time were negative reviews or reports gets viral rapidly, it might end up as an ordinary affair at the box office.

On the contrary, such online platforms played a pivotal role in the success movies like Sanju, Stree and Badhaai Ho. Other than diehard followers of the actors, there is a major section of the audience which awaits word-of-mouth or online reactions to flow in, before planning to watch any movie. And for such segment of the people, social media is informative. For many mid-budget or low budget movies, which are content driven, such social platforms are the effective and convenient source to create awareness or to increase the reach amongst masses.

Just like two sides of the coin, the social media has both its advantages and disadvantages, as it helps word-of-mouth to spread like a wildfire. It works either way, as a deterrent or as an impetus for the movies.