10th March 2017 - This was the day when Badrinath Ki Dulhania released. This was also the last instance of a Hindi film really doing well in theaters and raking in big numbers. The film went on to cross the 100 crore mark. However, post that there have been number of prominent Bollywood releases to hit the screens. However, in these two months gone by, the only film that did some sort of business was Naam Shabana while other films couldn't even touch the 30 crore mark.
Now that's a sorry state of affairs and if the trend so far with Sarkar 3 and Meri Pyaari Bindu is any indication, even their combined collections won't touch the 30 crore mark! Unfortunate, but true. Picture this - Sarkar 3 currently stands at 8.10 crore after gathering just 1.35 crore* more on Monday. Meri Pyaari Bindu was on the same lines with its Monday number of 1.25 crore* bringing its eventual score to 7.75 crore*. Between the two films, just a little over 15 crore has been crossed so far. The trending so far indicates that the sum total of their lifetime won't cross 30 crore.
If this isn't truly an unfortunate state of affairs, what is!
In the last couple of months at least 5 notable films accompanied by around 10 other small films have released. They have hardly made any contribution at the Box Office and the industry is still searching for even a good success, leave aside something which is a clean Hit. If not for the dubbed version of Baahubali 2 keeping audiences busy, it would have been doomsday for theaters.
Hopefully, things would improve a bit with upcoming new releases - Half Girlfriend and Hindi Medium.
*Estimates. Final numbers awaited
Note: All collections as per production and distribution sources