From Atal Bihari Vajpayee(Atal) to Syed Abdul Rahim(Maidaan)… biopics are not doing well this year. 2024 has not been kind to bio-pics.Real-life stories have been dealt serious blows: Main Atal Hoon(a shoddy slobbering saga on former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee which flattered only to deceive),Maidaan(Ajay Devgan stood tall as real life hero football coach Syed Abdul Rahim), Swatantrya Veer Savarkar(Randeep Hooda’s one-man show) and Ae Watan Mere Watan( freedom fighter Usha Mehta found no freedom in her cinematic avatar) all fell short of expectations.
Srikanth , the biopic on the intrepid blind entrepreneur Srikanth Bolla, showed decent numbers on account of its moderate budget.
Even the much appreciated Chandu Champion has underperformed at the boxoffice,
In a shocking development, several major forthcoming biopics are being shut down temporarily or for keeps. Among them are life stories of Sourav Ganguly and Abhinav Bindra.
A source in the know informs, “Seeing the plight of biopics,there is a drastic rethink going on over the real-life stories that are in pre-production, and that includes the ones on Sourav Ganguly and Abhinav Bindra. As a matter of fact, even those biopics that are in production or complete , are now on hold. Karan Johar will take a call on the fate of the Akshay Kumar starrer Shankara(the story of lawyer C Shankara Nair lawyer’s court battle against the British Raj to expose Michael O’Dwyer’s involvement in the Jallianwala Bagh massacre) after the release of Akshay’s other bio-pic Sarfira.”
The Abhinav Bindra biopic was expected to star Harshvardhan Kapoor and produced by his father Anil Kapoor , while Sourav Ganguly’s biopics, was to be directed by Vikramaditya Motwane and produced by Luv Ranjan.
But for them to move forward, the audiences current seeming satiation with biopics must end.