2022: Shocks and lessons for Bollywood

2022 has been a forgettable year for the Hindi film industry. Films and failures have gone hand in hand - with few exceptions. The annual report card is a wake-up call as the beleaguered industry looks forward to the New Year with more anxiety than optimism.

Setbacks experienced by major male stars like Ajay Devgn, Akshay Kumar and Ranveer Singh have contributed to Bollywood’s narrative dominated by duds this year. Devgn delivered flops with the self-directed and produced thriller, Runway 34 and Indra Kumar’s comedy, Thank God. Luckily for him, he ended the year on a good note with Abhishek Pathak’s crime thriller, Drishyam 2, the Hindi version of Jeethu Joseph’s Malayalam film of the same name. A rare remake that worked, the Hindi sequel made viewers gravitate to the theatres because of Drishyam, also a remake of Joseph’s film of the same name and a successful prequel with a cult following. That Drishyam 2 is a well-directed film with good performances has added to its viewership as it remains alive in the theatres five weeks after release.

Bollywood resident Mr Prolific, Akshay Kumar, had a series of theatrical failures. The actor had as many as four big-screen releases this year: Aanand L Rai’s social comedy Raksha Bandhan, Farhad Samji’s action comedy Bachchan Pandey, a remake of Karthik Subbaraj’s Tamil film Jigarthanda, Chandraprakash Dwivedi’s historical drama Samrat Prithviraj and Abhishek Sharma’s action-adventure film Ram Setu. None of them made the cash counters clink. He has also had a direct-to-digital release, Ranjit M Tewari’s rather ordinary psychological thriller Cuttputtli, Ram Kumar’s Tamil film Ratsasan’s remake, that released on Disney + Hotstar. Kumar is a hardworking actor who wants to diversify and experiment, but he must sign on the dotted line for films with better scripts to resurrect his career.

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How Kumar has fared in 2022 indicates that Bollywood must do what it takes to satisfy the more demanding viewer in the post-Covid era. The poor performance of Rohit Shetty’s ensemble cast period comedy Cirkus, a December 23 release, is a reminder that attracting audiences has become far more difficult than earlier. A hit-delivering machine, Shetty, along with most industry observers, would have been surprised at the speed with which negative feedback travelled on social media and decided the film’s fate on the first day itself. Handicapped by a weak screenplay that aspires to make the viewer laugh but seldom succeeds, Cirkus’s underwhelming performance is also the second flop of 2022 for its hero Ranveer Singh after Divyang Thakkar’s Jayeshbhai Jordaar, a comedy-drama which had tanked noiselessly.

Cirkus had a slow start on day one, grossing an estimated Rs 6.25 crore, which is disappointing for a well-promoted big-budget film but more than what the midsize film usually earns. The fact that it got more theatrical attendance compared to an average mid-size film also implied the volume of feedback was that much more. Most viewers did not like what they saw, with some sharing their thoughts on social media, reducing the chances of subsequent recovery manifold.

The marketplace for films is unpredictable. Films that seem destined to succeed don’t. A sleeper hit like Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri’s controversial low-budget drama The Kashmir Files was the outcome of good theatrical attendance born out of curiosity among viewers on opposing sides of the ideological fence. As most other films crashed, it was clear that more producers will make small and mid-size films, some of them direct-to-digital releases and other low-risk theatrical releases.

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Ayushmann Khurrana, a big star of mid-size cinema, experienced failures with Anubhav Sinha’s action thriller Anek set in the Northeast and Anirudh Iyer’s action thriller An Action Hero, neither of which was dismissed by critics. Anubhuti Kashyap’s comedy-drama Doctor G, the story of a male doctor with rigid ideas who wants a post-doctoral seat in the orthopaedics department but is compelled to take up gynaecology, was modestly successful.

Doctor G’s lighter moments, in particular, drew audiences to the theatres, but Anek’s theme and Khurrana’s first-ever performance in an action-oriented role in An Action Hero did not connect with the viewers. The actor will surely be a long-distance runner in his chosen space, but his box-office performance in 2022 suggests that mid-size theatrical releases with unusual ideas that have mass appeal have the best chance of doing well. An established actor with a familiar onscreen man-next-door image in films with relatable social messaging, Khurrana should find success with less difficulty if he doesn’t play an action hero fighting his adversary to stay alive for another day.

The long series of failures with few exceptions has given rise to the need for assessing market conditions like never before. The industry must accept that oft-used shortcuts, among them, leaning heavily on a male star’s off-screen appeal and producing remakes, are unlikely to deliver much-needed good commercial outcomes. That is the viewer’s message for Bollywood, with the New Year a few days away.

(The writer is a senior journalist)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.