Will 2017 end with a bang?

Once again Bollywood will look up to Salman Khan to deliver some good news on the commercial front. To say that the audience is entertainment-starved just got underlined by the rocking BO numbers that ‘Fukrey Returns’ earned for itself last week.

Salman is one of the Bollywood’s biggest bets to create ripples on BO, however, he was also underlined by his other failure this year called ‘Tubelight’. The much-awaited movie went down the drain because of its content, which looked a huge repeat of the same factors that had worked for Kabir Khan’s earlier hit with Salman called ‘Bajrangi Bhaijaan’, it worked huge initial numbers at the box office.

So in that sense, the director Abbas Ali Zafar has already won the half battle. The trailer, that was released a few weeks ago has raked in a record number of views on YouTube, which means the audience is there and waiting. The theme of rescuing trapped victims from a ruthless terrorist is not exactly a phenomenally new script idea but Abbas Ali Zafar did make an extremely watchable saga in ‘Sultan’, from a story which has been seen a few times before in both Hollywood and Bollywood.

The other point that goes in favour of Abbas Ali Zafar that, barring the torture of “men forever running in slow motion” in ‘Gunday’, all his other movies have been appreciated for their content.

There is another factor, which is working big in favour of ‘Tiger Zinda Hai’. While you can be sure that the makers did not plan for it but as they say when destiny smiles at you it does shower you with some warmth. The first factor was the postponement of ‘Padmavati’, which looked like the winner of 2017, till a huge controversy snowballed into its derailment, in all probability that movie, which could have given some fight to ‘Tiger Zinda Hai’ has been put out of the radar.

Add the kind of misery that the audience has been subjected to in the last two odd months. B-grade stuff like ‘Julie 2’ and ‘Aksar 2’ has been passed on to audiences and if you look at the numbers of these movies, the audiences were actually so desperate for entertainment that they did give these movies some try. Content-driven films like ‘Ittefaq’ and ‘Tumhari Sulu’ garnered good numbers at the box office.

The biggest example as mentioned above is ‘Fukrey Returns’, a movie which clearly did not have the content value of its original, has ended up becoming a colossal hit for its makers because it was just about watchable for the audiences who walked in. Lack of competition has ensured that ‘Fukrey Returns’ collections have maintained steady collection on weekdays.

I must add here that it is no way taking away the due deserved success of ‘Fukrey Returns’. The audience liked it and it has got probably more success than its making team thought it will because of the factor of no other choice available.

By the time ‘Tiger Zinda Hai’ comes on to the screen all these factors will work big in favour of the movie. Another significant factor that I feel will work for ‘Tiger Zinda Hai’ is that if you ignore the social media battles of fan groups; audience gives equal attention to movies of the three Khans and Akshay Kumar. Given the fact that SRK is out of form and Aamir’s last serious outing being ‘Dangal’ you can rest assured that a lot many fans will expect Salman to make good on behalf of the three icons.

In a lighter vein, even the law of averages might work in favour of Yashraj given the duds after duds they have delivered in recent past. It might not sound like a very logical point but it was the law of averages probably which had contributed to the surprise success of ‘Aaj Ka Arjun’ in the 1990s when Amitabh’s career obituary was being written across media.

‘Tiger Zinda Hai’ has worked up a positive curiosity in the audiences and at a very different level for the sake of those popcorn sellers across cinemas in India, one hopes ‘Tiger Zinda Hai’ brings a big bang to Indian box office.

By: Rahul Deo Bharadwaj