Box Office: Last Week Was A Big Time Losing Proposition For Bollywood

Half a dozen releases – not a single grosser. It was an unexpected bad week for Bollywood as the industry lost money big time in a span of 7 days.

To think of it, the 6 new Hindi releases could bring in just around 13-14 crore between them in 7 days. Even on a conservative scale, if the combined budget of these films was 50 crore, imagine the losses that have piled up. Moreover, most of these films don’t have the cushion of satellite or music (except Junooniyat) to take them through. A huge loss making proposition for Bollywood when Raman Raghav 2.0 [6 crore*], Junooniyat [3.25 crore*], 7 Hours To Go [2 crore*], A Scandall and Dil Toh Deewana [both less than 1 crore] have all lost money.

In fact even Hollywood wasn’t a big gainer and though the collections of Independence Day: Resurgence were double [25 crore*] of the Hindi releases, this is hardly any solace since the biggie was pitched to bring in a lot more moolah.

As for Udta Punjab, the film – which was once looking at comfortably going past the 65 crore mark and aiming for 70 crore – is now struggling to hit the 60 crore milestone. At 57.5 crore*, this would now be the second or third highest grosser of Shahid Kapoor, depending on whether it would manage to go past Haider [60 crore].

*Final numbers awaited

Note: All collections as per production and distributor sources

Joginder Tuteja tweets @tutejajoginder