Ranveer Singh‘s latest film Dhurandhar released this Friday (December 5) to moderate reviews from audiences. The action thriller, directed by Aditya Dhar, also features Sanjay Dutt, Arjun Rampal, Akshaye Khanna and R Madhavan in key roles. While majority of the viewers have applauded Dhar’s vision, his storytelling and the last-minute call to split the film into parts has divided the audience feedback.
Meanwhile, the film is also in hot water for its box office collections. Trade analysts in Bollywood have accused the film’s makers of manipulating the box office numbers through block booking to build a fake perception among the public. While corporate booking does happen for most big films, some of them go out of the way to exploit this to fudge box office numbers, and this is the allegation against Dhurandhar.
Prior to release of the film, Dhurandhar reported lukewarm advance booking, which was shocking for a big-budget action film in Bollywood. Early estimates suggested a first day of Rs 15-20 crore nett in India. For instance, Dhanush’s Tere Ishk Mein opened to Rs 15 crore nett in India despite being a romantic drama. Therefore, Dhurandhar was staring at an embarrassing opening day number.
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Box Office India has simply exposed the practices. Portal quoted. “The story of the film is something like the hero infiltrating the terrorists but here it’s become about infiltrating the multiplexes and buying tickets. The film itself may go not be able to go wider but makers have gone wider in buying tickets.” Portal further added, “The buying of tickets have made it into a farce so despite the film doing reasonable business so far it all becomes about the buying and only god knows what is the aim of the makers in terms of perception.”
Veteran trade analyst and distributor Raj Bansal is surprised at this strategy by Dhurandhar’s producers, given that the ground report for the film from the viewers is more than decent. Another analyst Navneet Mundhra has put up screenshots on X, proving how the PR team of Dhurandhar is trying to influence the film’s reviews and box office.
When there is a variance as big as almost 30 percent to the film’s box office collection, there is bound to be an outrage from the Bollywood trade. The coming days will give us a clearer picture on this but for now, it is fair to say that these allegations are taking some sheen off the audience reviews on the film.
Film has crossed 61 crore as per official figures in two days but actual numbers are close to 40 crore as per various trade sources.
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