For the past few weeks, we’ve had a steady stream of small Bollywood releases. The trend continued last Friday with another two. There was Rakhee Sandilya’s Ribbon with Kalki Koechlin and Sumeet Vyas chronicling an urban marriage. The film had a very limited release, in just 300 screens with one show per day. Even though Ribbon has been critically appreciated, its collections have been negligible amounting to just ₹10 to ₹15 lakhs, as per Shailesh Kapoor of Ormax Media, a firm specialising in trade insights.
Ribbon’s contender last week was Ittefaq, which released in over 1,100 screens across the country. Despite being a product of Dharma Productions (Karan Johar) and Red Chillies Entertainment (Shah Rukh Khan), the film was made on a reported budget of a mere ₹20 to ₹25 crore. The thriller, inspired by the 1969 film of the same name, starring Rajesh Khanna, had an unconventional promotional strategy. Eschewing most press interviews and television appearances, Ittefaq was solely pushed on social media. As of November 7, the Sidharth Malhotra-starrer has collected ₹18.80 crore. While some reports blamed the promotional methods for low earnings, analysts like Kapoor say otherwise. “This genre [a thriller] doesn’t have mass appeal and the film had no music,” says Kapoor adding that certain profitable regions like the north especially respond to music.
Then there’s the fact that Ittefaq largely caters to multiplex audiences; most business has come from the top five to six metros. Add to the fact that even urban theatre-goers prefer slice of life films and this remake lost more potential tickets. Another setback has been the release of Marvel’s much-awaited Thor: Ragnarok which has collected a ₹Rs 35 crore so far. It also took away footfalls that could have made their way to the Hindi thriller.
In the end though, Kapoor does admit that while Ittefaq’s collections haven’t been impressive compared to the usual Bollywood fare, the film has performed exactly how a thriller would at the Indian box office. He predicts it to make about ₹30 crore by the end of this week. “If the promotions would have been [stronger], it would have impacted the film negatively,” he adds saying a strong marketing campaign would work against the film. It would offer the incorrect perception of Ittefaq being a larger film than it actually is, restricting its already limited hold in theatres.