In recent years, several Bollywood films have underperformed at the box office, which also included films of high budget with big star casts.
It has been happening since the arrival of global COVID-19 pandemic, which shook the entire world and of course it miserably affected Bollywood and other film industries too. During this pandemic several film production houses were halted in effect of strong lockdown, social distancing policies and guidelines for several months.
As time went by, everything started returning to normalcy and back on the track, except Bollywood. In between, many films were also released on several OTT platforms due to uncertainty over opening of public theatres due to pandemic guidelines. Afterwards, at the time when limited number of theatres started to operate many high budget films could not recover their invested amounts due to box office failures.
It is undeniably necessary to include the sudden tragic death of Sushant Singh Rajput during nationwide lockdown on 14th June, 2020, which shook the entire country. Many audiences started blaming biased and partiality within the film industry which provoked him to commit suicide, while others criticized the practice of nepotism among the big film fraternities.
Social medias were flooded with a common belief that Sushant was a victim of nepotism which left him isolated from various film offers in popular production houses, despite he was a talented actor.
Since then, till now, audiences have shown eagerness to accept only those films which have good contents with pure entertainment values rather than fancy and colorful mindless contents with huge starcast.
In the past few months, several South Indian films garnered huge collections at the box office. Allu Arjun's Pushpa, Rajamouli's mega budget actioner RRR, Kannada star Yash's KGF Chapter 2 and Mahesh Babu's latest Sarkaru Vaari Pata to name a few. In the meantime several Bollywood films resulted into disasters after their release.
Meanwhile, Akshay Kumar's Bachchan Paandey and Samrat Prithviraj, Ajay Devgn's directorial drama thriller Runaway 34, Hindi remake of Jersey, Tiger Shroff's Heropanti 2, Kangana Ranaut starrer Dhaakad and Ayushman Khurana's geopolitical thriller Anek, all of these bombed at the box office.
Among the recent Bollywood releases only 4 films performed unexpectedly well at the box office, they are - Sooryavanshi (Rs.340 crores), Gangubai Kathiawadi (Rs.209 crores), The Kashmir Files (Rs.340 crores) and Bhool Bhulaiya 2 (Rs.190+ crores).
Laal Singh Chaddha - Hit or Flop?
At this point, the main question which pop ups is - will Laal Singh Chaddha, starring Aamir Khan, manage to sustain at the box office? It is slated to release on 11th August, 2022.
Since the launch of its trailer, majority section of people are criticising it as a scene-to- scene copy of Tom Hanks' Academy Award winning Forrest Gump (1994). They are pointing fingers towards Bollywood's lack of creativity in making new films with new scripts.
Few people are also complaining about repetitive and similar popped-eyes expression of Aamir Khan which was visible in 3 Idiots, PK and Dhoom 3.
Box office Prediction of Laal Singh Chaddha:
In my estimation, Laal Singh Chaddha will result in between Average and Above Average at the box office. Made with the budget of Rs.180 crores, it will manage to reach Rs.250- 500 crores (maximum) at its overall box office collection.
Aamir is widely considered as Mr. Perfectionist in Bollywood for his dedication and effort in making a film as realistic and credible as possible, so that audiences don't complain about its content.
However, one has to understand the present trend of Bollywood films’ box office results.
They want pure and fresh content which they didn't watch before. They want contents which will definitely entertain them.
In this case, Laal Singh Chaddha is a remake or deeply inspired by Forrest Gump, which have been already watched by majority of audiences. Besides, public reactions on its trailer is mostly negative, and it will have a huge impact upon its box office collection after its release.
Audiences have become wiser in selection of movies and spending bucks (money) for
tickets.
Overall, producers of Laal Singh Chaddha will have to heavily market before its release for wider audience.