A disastrous BO weekend

Will Smith scored reasonably well with his Bad Boys franchise this weekend, but not well enough for the film to be considered a hit. Meanwhile, the other releases this week were poor enough to put multiplex chains into the dread if not the red over the weekend.

“This has been one of the worst weekends in recent times. Releases like Himesh Reshammiya’s Happy Hardy & Heer and the Malala biopic Gul Makai were so poor that we had to look at cancelling the few shows that we had allotted them per day. The Saif starrer Jawaani Jaaneman did slightly better, but not good enough to be considered anywhere near a success. Will Smith’s Bad Boys did better than all the Hindi releases on Friday, though even that was a disappointment. Even the Hindi dubbed version underperformed,” says an employee of a leading chain.

To be fair, the releases this week largely deserved their disastrous fate. Barring Jawaani Jaaneman, the other releases were fiercely substandard products that did not even deserve a theatrical release. Why would audiences waste money watching a film with zero face-value and no plausibility in the storyline?

In addition, a major chunk of the audience stayed away for other reasons. Trade insider Amod Mehra explains, “School exams are around the corner. The box office collections were bound to be affected. Because of exams, even Bad Boys was affected.”