Mid year report : Dismal show by bollywood

The world's biggest film industry struggled to make a profit in the first half of 2007. Star appeal, big budgets and swanky foreign locations have all failed to bring cheer to Bollywood. Analysts blamed weak scripts for the failures.

It was almost impossible for Bollywood to repeat the success of 2006 -- its best year ever -- but the failure to deliver even one blockbuster so far in 2007 has surprised all.

While some films aimed at niche audiences made profits and a few others won only acclaim, the big-ticket Hindi-language films with top stars failed to set the cashbox jingling.

"Where are the good stories? You can't get away with only star appeal and foreign locales," said Bollywood trade analyst Komal Nahta.

"If you have a good script, chances are you will have a hit, stars or no stars."

Although Guru and Namaste London were declared hits in some circles, there is not a single superhit to make profits in all the territories this year. The films which did the fair business are:

Movie name	Cost	Collections
Cheeni kum	12 Cr	12 Cr (Running)
Life in a Metro	7-8 Cr	9-10 Cr
Bheja Fry	60 lakh	~3 Cr
Namaste London	30-32 Cr	34-35 Cr
Guru	14-15 Cr	22-23 Cr

Salam-E-Ishq and Jhoom barabar jhoom came as the 2 disastrous flops of the year. The list of loss making movies is quite big. However, this is the list of top 5 flops.

Movie name	Cost	Collections
Tara Rum Pum	31 Cr	30 Cr
Eklavya	20-21Cr	15Cr
Nishabd	7-8Cr	<5 Cr
Jhoom barabar Jhoom	30-32 Cr	Disastrous Flop(Running)
Salam-E-Ishq	30-35 Cr	25 Cr

Analyst have lots of hopes on Apne and Aap ka suroor, both released on 29-june-2007. If both of them together make a profit of 20Cr, that will improve the mid yeear results of bollywood. Both of them are declared hit in some areas, and are expected to make profits.

I will post a separate article on box office collections of these movies.

Please put on your comments, if you like the article.