SHAANDAAR FLOPS; FOX STAR STUDIOS JINXED!
The industry, trade and viewers are all in a state of shock, thanks to Shaandaar. It boasted of some great actors; was backed by prominent producers and directed by Vikas Bahl, whose Queen was a masterstroke. In the worst case scenario, people though that it would be an average fare. Shockingly, Shaandaar turned out to be a illogical, boring fare. It was supposed to be funny but hardly raised any laughs. The word of mouth was extremely negative, which was quite rare. No wonder that the film crashed heavily at the box office during the weekends itself.
More than Shaandaar’s debacle, what has astonished everyone even more that it adds to the huge list of the flops of the co-producers, Fox Star Studios. Since 2013, they have come up with 17 films and except for Jolly LLB, all other films have either bombed or turned out to be underperformers. Their bad time started with their first film of 2013, Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola. The medium-budget Murder 3 failed to recover its costs at the box office. Bullett Raja meanwhile also flopped. In 2014, Hawaa Hawaai and Citylights failed to attract audiences despite getting critical acclaim. Humshakals, on the other hand, was a bad comic caper and expectedly, it flopped. Finding Fanny failed to impress audiences with his quirkiness. Bang Bang was a 100 crore grosser but was an underperformer. In 2015, Fox backed three films of Vishesh Films – Khamoshiyan, Mr X and Hamari Adhuri Kahani – and all 3 flopped, though the later got positive response from a section of people. Anurag Kashyap’s magnum opus Bombay Velvet bombed so badly that it’s considered to be one of the biggest commercial disasters ever. Then Fox came up with 2 films of Dharma. One was Shaandaar while the other was Brothers, which failed to set the box office on fire as well. In between, Fox released 2 reasonable-budget, high-concept films like Miss Tanakpur Haazir Ho and Guddu Rangeela. But even these 2 films couldn’t reach to the ‘Hit’ status!
What’s scary is that the next film of Fox is, brace yourselves, Prem Ratan Dhan Payo, the big Diwali magnum opus! It stars Salman Khan and is directed by Sooraj Barjatya and needless to say, a lot is expected from the film. From the promos and songs, it looks like a winner. But the presence of Fox might make many apprehensive about the box office prospects! Rationally, it is wrong to believe in jinx but when a production house gives so many flops in a row, even the most rational person will start believing in such things!
Here’s hoping that Prem Ratan Dhan Payo brings back the ‘Achche Din’ for Fox and for audiences as well!
