2017 has been the year of disappointment for Bollywood. Several biggies like Tubelight, Jagga Jasoos, and Raabta bombed at the box office. Now one of the most anticipated Bollywood movies of the year “Jab Harry Met Sejal” hit the screens on 4th August. There were sky high expectations from the movie thanks to superstar “Shahrukh Khan” but neither the movie nor its box office collection could meet the expectations. One one hand it received merely negative reviews from the critics, on the other hand, the movie opened to a low note on box office. A collection of 45.75 crores in its opening weekend is quite low for a SRK movie.
One had surely expected that the movie will at least enter into 100 crore club at the domestic box office but it seems almost impossible due to negative word of mouth. Since you must be wondering about film’s box office fate, we analyzed few factors which led JHMS to become a box office failure-
- Poor Script– However it’s a well-known fact that SRK is king of romance but JHMS desperately missed one thing i.e. script. Shahrukh and Anushka both tried hard but a bad script washed out their efforts. The movie couldn’t bind the audience due to lack of story and attachment with characters. Recently Shahrukh Khan had experienced one more box office failure with his movie ‘Fan’ due to a bad script(don’t know why he didn’t learn from that). Same went for Salman Khan starrer “Tubelight”.
- Too many songs– Too many songs outrage the flow of the story and that exactly happened in JHMS. As soon as you start engaging with the story, a song erupts and the movie loses the plot. Recently released Jagga Jasoos too was a victim of this. Very few movies like “Aashiqui 2 and Rockstar” could bind the audience with their soulful tracks.
- Targeted Audience– This is one of the factors which was well known till SRK announced his film with a director like Imtiaz Ali. JHMS was not for the mass audience. It was urban centered and so single screen theaters were empty(well, multiplexes too didn’t fare well due to a bad script).
- Lack of freshness– Audience demand for a movie which has something new to offer. Films like “Bahubali” witnessed epic success due to the freshness in their script. JHMS has nothing new to offer. Although the movie was shot at some mesmerizing locations but was a typical Bollywood rom-com and lacks new or interesting concept.
With one more biggie biting the dust, it’s high time for Bollywood to rethink about its strategies because only ‘star power’ is not enough now.
Last Updated on by Sandipan Dasgupta