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No Fear No Favour

Salman Khan’s Tubelight Flops Even After Collecting 84 Crores In Just 4 Days, Read How!

Tubelight’ has flopped at the domestic box office and Salman Khan has failed for the first time this decade during Eid. The film failed to show the kind of growth that it needed on the big holiday for Eid. It has collected Rs 83 crore in 4 days at the box office, with the lowest collections coming on the Eid holiday.

The circuits and centres that were affected by Ramzan showed good growth on Monday, but business witnessed major falls at places where the impact of Eid was limited over the weekend. The film could collect around 110-115 crore by the end of its first week and the second weekend will decide whether the film can go on to become the highest Hindi grosser of the year.

The struggle for a film like ‘Tubelight’ during Eid to easily beat a 132-crore grosser like ‘Raees’ has sent shockwaves within the industry. It also shows the extremely unpredictable side of the film business, as most in the trade were expecting it to comfortably cross the 100 crore mark by the end of the Eid holiday on Monday.

Meanwhile, Salman’s golden run during Eid has finally come to an end after 6 consecutive box office blockbusters. Between 2010 to 2016, the megastar had 6 Eid releases – Dabangg, Bodyguard, Ek Tha Tiger, Kick, Bajrangi Bhaijaan, Sultan – and almost all of them went on to be record-openers and major box office grosser.

His latest release, directed by the same man (Kabir Khan) who gave him his biggest grosser and arguably his career-best film (Bajrangi Bhaijaan), is also likely to give him his biggest failure since ‘Veer’ in January 2010.

How Distributors Will Lose Money Even If The Movie Collects 150 Crore Or Above.

The Distributor forms the most vital link in this money chain by acting as a medium between Producers and Theatres. The Producer has to deal out their film to the All India Distributors. The price at which the producer sells his film to the distributors is termed as “Theatrical Rights”. The producer can either directly sell the Theatrical Rights to Distributors or make a contract with any Third Party which in turn has the responsibility to deal with Distributors. In that case, the Producer will get his share from the third-party even before his film releases and all Profit/Loss will be incurred by third-party only. For example, Yash Raj Films distribute their films themselves, while Nadiadwala Grandson’s had a contract with EROS for Housefull 2. Indian film industry is majorly distributed in 14 circuits and each has its distributors to represent them : – Mumbai, Delhi/UP, East Punjab, CI (Central India), CP Berar (Central Provinces), Rajasthan, Bihar, West Bengal, Nizam, Mysore, Tamil Nadu, Assam, Orissa, and Kerala.

Makers of Tubelight sold the movie at market high-price, because of the sheer presence of Salman Khan and his consistency to deliver blockbusters even if his movie is critically panned by critics, for example, Bodyguard, Dabangg 2, Kick etc. Since Dabangg in 2010, he consistently delivered big hits at the box-office (barring Jai Ho, but even that was semi-hit) and by reuniting with his All Time Blockbuster movie Bajarangi Bhaijaan director Kabir Khan for the third time, it was a no-brainer that distributors would have thought the same results like Salman’s previous Eid outings.

How Movies Termed As Hit Or Flop At The Box-Office?

General norm is that the collection of a film judges how big success it is. But, this is false. In reality, it is the Distributor Share which decides a film’s fate because it takes into account both the film’s cost & its box office performance. A film may be called a FLOP fare if it collects 60cr net because of its huge costs to the makers and distributors. On the contrary, another film may turn out to be HIT even if nets 40cr only due to low budget. For Example, A movie like Hindi Medium is a profit for both exhibitors and distributors, whereas Half Girlfriend is an Average affair for producers.
With 107 crore collection, a movie like Badrinath Ki Dulhaniya is a bigger hit than 139 crore collection of Shahrukh’s Raees.

It’s good to read 20 crores on the first day or 18 crores on the fourth day (case in point, Tubelight) but that is not the parameter trade set for movies, trade depends on the total collection, and if distributors lose money, in the end, the movie is considered as FLOP at the box-office.

By: Saket Sharma (Figures are from IndiCine)

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