Box Office - SRK’s Pathaan Leads The Show, Contributes Hugely To Bollywood's First Quarter Of 750 Crores

The first quarter of 2023 has come to a close and just a little over 750 crores have come in. While this may come across as a good enough number, the fact remains that it has all happened due to one big film, Pathaan. The Shah Rukh Khan starrer is solely responsible for over 70% of these numbers, what with extraordinary collections of 544 crores. Remove this film from the equation and Bollywood pretty much found itself in shambles in the quarter gone by.

Picture this. To begin with, merely 15 Hindi films released between January to March, which is an all time low when compared to pre-pandemic era (i.e. till 2019) when the flow of releases was far more regular. In 2020 it came to an abrupt halt at March beginning itself after the release of Baaghi 3 and then in 2021 there was practically nothing. There was some sort of resurgence in 2022 when Badhaai Do was the first major release in February though there was no such issue in 2023. Hence, it is rather surprising that there were hardly any releases.

Out of these 15 releases, only around 10 were notable and then just six films belonged to the kind that would have been designed as core theatrical releases. These are Pathaan, Tu Jhoothi Main Makkaar, Bholaa, Shehzada, Selfiee and Mrs. Chatterjee vs Norway. With just six movies carrying the load of lending Bollywood a good start in 2023, the impact was felt big time when just three of this ended up working (albeit to varying degree) and the fourth is trying to pave its way in.

When Shah Rukh Khan, Siddharth Anand, Aditya Chopra, John Abraham and Deepika Padukone brought their Pathaan during the long weekend of Republic Day, it seemed like 'achche din' were back again. One record after another was being created and in quick time the film crossed the 400 crores mark. Though the journey from there to the 500 crores mark was expected to be rather dicey, the film faced no such problem eventually. No wonder, it has already collected 544 crores after nine weeks and would easily go past the 545 crores mark eventually.

Unfortunately though, the momentum wasn't really taken forward by the next two releases, Shehzada and Selfiee. One expected both of these to be 100 Crore Club films at least. After all,. Kartik Aaryan is a heartthrob amongst the youth and Akshay Kumar is a superstar for over three decades. However, it came as a rather rude shock when former closed at 33 crores and latter found itself at 16.85 crores lifetime. Really, one can't quite fathom what really happened since these films were made well and also carried a big screen vibe. Still, audiences stayed away.

Thankfully, there was resurgence shown by Tu Jhoothi Main Makkaar which ended up scoring a century. Of course, one expected this to get into Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani zone and eventually score at least 175 crores, if not a double hundred itself. However, an uneven first week prevented that from happening, though ever since the Ranbir Kapoor and Shraddha Kapoor starrer has been hanging in there. Eventually the film will reach 145 crores and that's a good total given the kind of response that films are seeing in general.

Though in terms of quantum, 17.30 crores total of Mrs. Chatterjee vs Norway may look small but then it's at least a fair success given the commercials involved. The Rani Mukherji starrer is in fact only the third Bollywood success of 2023 so far and while Bholaa has raked in 18.60 crores in its first two days, it has to be seen where does it eventually travel and the kind of success tagging that comes its way.

Apart from these films, theatrical business of none of the other films has managed to cross even the 5 crores mark. Kuttey, Zwigato, Bheed, Gandhi Godse Ek Yudh, Almost Pyaar with DJ Mohabbat and Faraaz had names like Vishal Bhardwaj, Nandita Das, Anubhav Sinha, Rajkumar Santoshi, Anurag Kashyap and Hansal Mehta attached to them but the box office response wasn't quite forthcoming. As for other releases like Shiv Shastri Balboa, InCar and Operation Mayfair, the lifetime numbers were not even in 1 crore range.

All in all, commercially speaking it has been a rather disappointing first quarter of 2023 barring two money spinners Pathaan and Tu Jhoothi Main Makkaar with expectations from Bholaa to score. Surprisingly, things would take time to change since the second quarter isn't expected to be much better. The month of April sees only one major Bollywood release, Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan and May has absolutely nothing planned (no clue, why!). All eyes would be on June with Jawan, Adipurush, Maidaan and Satyaprem Ki Katha promising to deliver big numbers.

Three successes of Q1 2023

Pathaan - 544 crores

Tu Jhoothi Main Makkaar - 133.50 crores

Mrs. Chatterjee vs Norway - 17.30 crores

Note: All collections as per production and distribution sources