Kudos to Raaz-2, Slumdog Crorepati & Dev D

The 1st Qr of 2009 is over and while the good news is that there was a lot of variety in the kind of Bollywood movies released, in terms of success there were only 3 movies which can be actually called successful in the true sense. The range of movies varied from mainstream biggies like CC2C, Jai Veeru, Aa dekhen Zara etc, small movies like Firaaq,Barah Aana,The Stoneman Murders etc and movies which fall in between the mainstream biggies and the small movies in terms of budget and the number of release centre’s like Dev D,Gulaal,Luck By Chance etc. In all there were some 30 odd regular releases in the quarter (taking only the straight listed films in consideration and avoiding the so called unlisted movies and the various soft porn and dubbed movies the actual count is 31) and the actual successful films are just 3-Raaz-The Mystery Continues ( Raaz-TMC hereon), Slumdog Crorepati(hereon referred to as SDC ) and Dev D.
No this post is not a review of any of these 3 movies. We have already discussed the merits and demerits of these 3 movies in length. But yes considering these movies represent the successful 10 % (of the entire lot that released in Q 1’09), we need to not only appreciate these movies for their success but also briefly look at how & why they have been successful. Lets first talk about Raaz-2. Well we all now the kind of films Vishesh Films has been making – typically small/medium budget kind of movies with good music. This movie again did not prove to be an exception in this respect. Director Mohit Suri had already shot into prominence with movies like Zeher, Kalyug, Woh Lamhe & Awarapan and the movie had the trusted Emran Hashmi along with Kangna Ranaut ( of course it also had Adhyayan Suman ). Right from the beginning the promos showed that the movie had great music ( Raju Singh,Gaurav Dasgupta, Toshi,Sharib Sabri) and the catchy title reminded people of the highly successful Raaz.
So the people went at large and had a good time watching Raaz-TMC. Of course not many people felt it was really scary and many even felt that the climax was tame. But all said and done the solid promotion worked and Vishesh Films had a hit in their hands. On the day that Raaz-TMC released, there was another movie that got released- SDC. The Hindi version of SDM which released alongside across the country did quite well initially as the movie already had got noticed due to its popularity abroad and the series of awards it had started to sweep everywhere. But the actual success of the movie got noticed only much later i.e. after SDM swept away the Oscar Awards. In fact not only did shows of the movie get increased in most centre’s, in a lot of places where the movie had completed its initial run it was re-released and made even more money.
And then we finally come to Dev D, a movie which had a lot of fan following among the youth but was not considered to be all that powerful to make a strong impact at the box office. But surprisingly the movie not only managed to attract the youth, but it also managed to gain in popularity as days passed on. The results are there to see. It’s become a multiplex hit and as I write this post, the movie has crossed 50 days and is still playing in select multiplexes across the country. Considering that these days most of the movies make the maximum money in the first week of its release and that its tough for even a mainstream blockbuster to survive more than a few weeks, the success of Dev D is all the more commendable.
So these 3 movies had their audience and were helped by the kind of promotion it had. Be it a catchy title and a hit song like ‘Mahi Mahi’ or the Oscar Awards or ‘Emotional Atyachar’, each of these movies had something in them which helped the target audience identify with the movie and enable the movie’s success at the box office. That brings to the question- were all the other 28 releases bad? Well certainly not, some of them were definitely good and even critically appreciated but where they failed was in connecting to the audience. All said and done a 10 % success ratio is very scary indeed for the industry. We must need more and more successes both in the form of big & small/medium movies. After all a big movie’s success enables the production banner to fund many more small/medium movies. With the producer’s vs multiplexes strike supposedly starting from April 4th, there aren’t too many releases scheduled in April. Let’s hope the forthcoming releases in May and June turn out to be good and most of them manage to connect to their target audience and become successful.
Note- I have considered SDC as a Hindi version of SDM & not a dubbed movie as otherwise the success % falls even below 10 %.Moreover this post is only about box office success and not about how good or bad a film is.

Originally published in PFC- check it out here- http://passionforcinema.com/kudos-to-raaz-2-slumdog-crorepati-dev-d/