‘Stree’, ‘Love Sonia’, ‘Five Weddings’, ‘Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga’, ‘Judgemental Hai Kya’, ‘Made in China’, ‘Shimla Mirchi’, ‘Roohi’, ‘Hum Do Hamare Do’, ‘Badhaai Do’, ‘Hit The First Case’ and ‘Bheed’, one thing is common in these dozen Hindi films and that is its hero Rajkumar Rao. Out of these 12 films of Rajkumar with double M, only ‘Stree’ got success at the box office and the 11 films released after that flopped at the ticket window one after the other. This figure is till last year. Now, even before half a year has passed, Bhushan Kumar, the managing director of T Series, has declared the year 2024 as Rajkumar’s year. Let’s try to find out how much truth is there in his claim.
This claim of ‘Srikanth’ and ‘Mr. and Mrs. Mahi’ being hits was publicly released by Rajkumar Rao’s team last Friday. Along with the claim, this statement also includes a statement from T Series Managing Director Bhushan Kumar. Bhushan Kumar says here, “2024 is undoubtedly Rajkumar Rao’s year and his success says a lot about Rajkumar as an artist. His success is not only in playing a character but also in the fact that he understands the business side of filmmaking.” Bhushan also describes Rajkumar Rao as a rare artist who knows the economics of making films and that is why every producer wants to make a film with him.
On Friday itself, Rajkumar Rao’s team, which issued this statement, was requested to provide information about the total cost of making the two films ‘Shrikant’ and ‘Mr. and Mrs. Mahi’, which are said to be hits, the fees of the stars involved in the film and other expenses incurred in bringing the film to the theatres so that the business math of these two films of Rajkumar Rao can be calculated correctly. But, no information has been received so far from Rajkumar’s public relations team in this regard. The agency insists that “Bhushanji has given the quote.”
According to the data available in the market, let us know how the film ‘Srikant’ is doing at the box office a month after its release and how many sixes has ‘Mr. and Mrs. Mahi’ hit in 10 days? The film ‘Srikant’, which was released on May 10, has been produced by T Series. It has been a month since the film hit the theatres. But, the domestic box office collection of this film, made at a cost of about Rs 40 crore, has not even reached Rs 50 crore so far. Any film released in theatres gets the tag of a hit only when it can earn at least 70 to 80 percent profit on its cost. This is because the filmmaker gets only about 40 percent of the earnings from the sale of tickets in theatres, the rest of the income comes from the sale of satellite, OTT and music rights etc. T Series has a long agreement with Netflix and most of their films on OTT are released on this platform.