The debacle of ‘Thugs of Hindostan’ has hit business hard. This Aamir Khan-Amitabh Bachchan starrer was expected to rule the box office for a couple of weeks but it has turned out to be a miserable flop. The cracks started developing from Day 2 itself and the film crashed heavily in the weekdays. There has been a huge reduction of shows in Week 2 and the same will happen from tomorrow as well, when it enters into the third week. This has led to tough times for the exhibitors and they had no choice but to replace the shows of ‘Thugs of Hindostan’ with regional and Hollywood films. Holdover films like ‘Badhaai Ho’, ‘AndhaDhun’, ‘Baazaar’ etc also came to their rescue.
A few Hindi films also released last week but all of them – ‘Mohalla Assi’, ‘Pihu’ and ‘Hotel Milan’ – didn’t work at all the box office. This week will also be poor but better than last week. It’ll see the release of ‘Bhaiaji Superhit’. It’s a film in the making since almost 4-5 years and is directed by Neerraj Pathak, who earlier made an interesting but commercially flop film, ‘Right Yaaa Wrong’ (2010). That was a serious courtroom drama while ‘Bhaiaji Superhit’ is an action comedy of an UP-based gangster who tries his hand in films. It has an ensemble cast, comprising of Preity Zinta, Ameesha Patel, Arshad Warsi, Shreyas Talpade, Pankaj Tripathi, Jaideep Ahlawat and Sanjay Mishra.
The trailer however looks very poor and hardly funny, although Preity seems to be in form. Also, it comes too late in the day and after the debacles of Sunny’s other comic films like ‘Poster Boys’ (2017) and ‘Yamla Pagla Deewana Phir Se’ (2018). Both these films didn’t work in cinemas but were hits on TV. ‘Bhaiaji Superhit’ will also follow suit. However, it’s box office performance would be better than ‘Mohalla Assi’. This film of Sunny opened at Rs. 30 lakhs and ‘Bhaiaji Superhit’ hopefully should open in the Rs. 80 lakhs-1.10 crore range. The single screens in B and C centres might open better than multiplexes in cities.
The other Hindi release of the week is ‘The Dark Side of Life: Mumbai City’. It’s biggest USP is Mahesh Bhatt as an actor in a dynamic role. Kay Kay Menon, Deepraj Rana, Nikhil Ratnaparkhi, Jyoti Malshe and many others also star in this flick. The trailer of the film is very sad and unintentionally hilarious. There’s no buzz about the film at all and it’ll have a disastrous run.
All eyes are now on ‘2.0’, which releases next Thursday, on November 29. In fact, from next week till the end of the year, there’s a significant release every Friday; ‘Kedarnath’,’Mauli’ (Marathi), ‘Aquaman’, ‘Zero’ and ‘Simmba’. Exciting days are back with a bang!
