The best thing to happen to Prasanth Varma’s surprise hit Hanu Man is Fighter. The audiences’ disappointment at Fighter has translated into increased footfalls for Hanu Man.
Despite all (vain) attempts to create an aura of success around it, Fighter is clearly a severe underperformer. While the collections on the opening day January 25 were tepid, they improved slightly on Republic Day January 26, only to dip again on January 27.
The Sunday collections are even worse.
The manager of a leading multiplex theatre from Delhi tells this writer, “You are right,Sir. The collections are far from encouraging. To be honest , Fighter is fighting to stay afloat. Main abhi kuch aur nahin bolna chahta. But if this continues we may have to replace shows of Fighter with Hanu Man. It is doing better(business) even in its third week than Fighter in its opening weekend.”
One major factor pulling Fighter down is its shoddy 3D formating.
Says Roshan Singh, a leading exhibitor in Bihar, “The 3D seems to be a last-minute decision.It is totally unnecessary. It just distracts from the aerial action which is actually quite good.The 3D looks gimmicky and rushed.”
Also disappointing to Roshan is the Hrithik-Deepika pairing. “They are together for the first time. But they are not together on screen much. In fact Deepika is hardly there, except in those repeated shots of her walking in slow motion across the screen.”
As the chances of Fighter doing a miraculous turn-around at the boxoffice recedes, a question the makers of Fighter must ask themselves is: what is the point of paying Flmistan’s A-listers anything from 60 to 120 crores when they can’t even get the audiences to come on the first day ,whereas a small starless Telugu film , made at 1/20th the budget of Fighter takes the boxoffice by storm?
This is shocking , considering Fighter had everything favourable going for it: the never-before Hrithik-Deepika pair, Pathaan director Siddharth Anand, and a long holiday weekend.Just goes to prove: you can’t turn a khichdi dish into a biryani.
