Why Guzaarish Had A Dull Opening

By Anant Mathur (November 23, 2010)
 

For the last 3 days everyone in the industry has been wondering why Guzaarish took such a bad opening last Friday. Well, there are four reasons for this: 1) Sanjay Leela Bhansali, 2) Hrithik Roshan, 3) Aishwarya Rai, 4) Aditya Roy Kapoor. All four of whose previous releases have been super flops to say the least.

Sanjay Leela Bhansali has only had 2 hits in his career (Black and Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam) the rest (Khamoshi: The Musical, Devdas, Saawariya and now Guzaarish) are all flops. The problem with most top directors in India is they're trying to make films for the overseas market and film festivals. While they have every right to do that, when they do, they loose out on Indian culture and values. It's fine to make a film for the overseas market, but the overseas audience doesn't want to see what is being done overseas, they live through that everyday - they starve for Indian culture, which is lacking if these films. So, when directors like Sanjay Leela Bhansali make films, they not only loose the audience in India, but also overseas.

Hrithik Roshan's last film Kites was one of the biggest flops of the year. And that's still etched in the mind of the audience. Considering that Kites was made by his father's reputed banner, the audience expected more than a big budget disaster. That bad taste will remain with the audience for a while. His last real hit, Dhoom 2, was 4 years ago - every film released there after has fared worst than its predecessor. The big budget, Jodhaa Akbar, which also failed to set the box office on fire, was worse than Dhoom 2, and Kites fared worse than Jodhaa Akbar and now Guzaarish will enjoy a worst fate than Kites. Perhaps the audience will forgive Hrithik Roshan after he wins all the awards for his performance in Guzaarish, but that remains to be seen.
 

Aishwarya Rai's fate has been far worst than anyone else, her last few films - Action Replayy, Robot (Hindi version), Raavan, Jodhaa Akbar, Sarkar Raj, Provoked, The Last Legion, Umrao Jaan, and Mistress of Spices - have been some of the biggest box office disasters in recent years. In fact, in the last 5 years she has only had 2 hits to her credit Dhoom 2 and Guru. And in her 14 year career thus far, she's been part of 7 films which could be classified as hits. She may be the most beautiful woman in the world, but Aishwarya Rai has made some lousy choices when it comes to picking films.

Aditya Roy Kapoor, although a newcomer, his fate hasn't been that terrific to begin with. He may have co-starred with Aishwarya Rai, Hrithik Roshan, Ajay Devgn, Salman Khan and Akshay Kumar in his first three films (London Dreams, Action Replayy and Guzaarish), but unlucky for him, all of them are super flops.

Having four people with a history of flops to their credit in one film doesn’t work well for any film, so why would it work for Guzaarish. It shouldn’t be a surprise that Guzaarish is going to be a super flop, with an 80 crore budget to begin with, the makers had a major hand in digging its grave. If filmmakers expect to make a profit, the average film budgets need to be 15-20 crore not 70-80 crore. I’ve said it before and I’ll probably say it again, the Indian film market can’t sustain films with budgets over 30-35 crore, so filmmakers better learn that quickly.

Instead of tweeting and facebooking, stars need to concentrate on picking better scripts. I've heard it a thousand time - "it's hard to tell which film will work at box office and which won't" - all that is bull crap. What's the point of writing scripts if you can't tell the difference between good and bad ones. The whole idea behind writing a script is it gives you a blue print to what you're making. If after reading the script stars and filmmakers can't tell whether the story is good or not, they shouldn't be in this business.

A script will tell you if it has the potential to be a blockbuster film. The only time a fabulous script may flop at the box office is if there are no stars in it. But, if you have stars in the film, a good story will never fail at the box office.

The audience will only give their stars so many chances until they lose faith in their superstars and so-called top directors of the country. They’re realizing that the big budgets are the only thing going for the film and the story takes a back seat because of the star names attached. Actors may work hard and give the best performance of their career, but that's secondary when the film is not entertaining. If things are not set right soon, there will come a time when even the most entertaining films will flop, because the audience would’ve lost faith in their stars. I think it’s already begun, and with TV being such a big hit in the country, only time will tell how long we have before that day comes when multiplexes will be empty and everyone will be glued to their TVs at home. 

© Anant Mathur. All Rights Reserved.