With 'Laal Singh Chaddha', Bollywood Sinks Deeper

Another long holiday weekend, another big-ticket release, and another flop.

With Laal Singh Chaddha making a crash landing on its opening day, troubles for the Mumbai film industry, aka Bollywood, have only intensified. Usually, festival releases register mammoth bookings, have a lot of hype around them since the leading production houses and companies back them, and rely on word-of-mouth to sustain the momentum to the following week to ensure an entry into the Rs. 300 Crore club. However, Aamir Khan’s Lal Singh Chaddha fails on all three fronts.

The writing was on the wall. Given it was an official remake of Tom Hanks’ Forrest Gump, released in 1994 and winner of six Academy Awards (back then, they meant something), the movie was making news even during the pre-production stage.

However, what derailed its run was the lack of buzz after the trailer and music release, a relatively disappointing music album, and the political elephant in the room that returned to trample over Aamir Khan’s aspirations. It was a double-whammy for one of the biggest Indian movie stars.

For Bollywood, this spells trouble in many ways. One, the pressure from regional releases will only increase from here. The success of KGF:2, Pushpa, and RRR in the Hindi belt has left the producers confused about the market mood.

Two, there appears to be complete cluelessness about Hollywood’s growing market share. To put things in perspective, in peak winter in 2021, Spider-Man: No Way Home had shows as early as 6:30 AM in NCR, a phenomenon that was unheard of in the past, even with Shah Rukh Khan.

There is also the question of lazy filmmaking. As per the early reviews of Lal Singh Chaddha, the self-proclaimed perfectionist, Aamir Khan has churned out an over-simplified and rather convenient adaptation of Forrest Gump. For Akshay Kumar, the formula of churning out movies like Ford used to churn out cars is no longer working, as evident by the commercial failures of Bachchhan Pandey, Samrat Prithviraj, and Bell Bottom. The gamble of betting on a superstar for an assured commercial return no longer works, not even for Salman Khan.

While the inflated prices paid by several OTT platforms ensure that the producers do not sink, the footfalls in the theatres are gradually decreasing. However, the market correction will soon follow.

Netflix, Disney, or Amazon, today, in an attempt to accelerate their acquisitions for an elaborate library, are happily paying crores of rupees for mediocre or sub-standard productions, but the party shall not last forever, given the companies running these platforms have their economic limitations.

Most importantly, the audiences are done being preached to. An average consumer walks into the multiplex for entertainment, but the market is bound to be repelled when movies are intentionally curated for political, social, or religious messaging. There would be exceptions, but the audiences can now see through the veil of most artists and superstars.

Against Aamir Khan, the audience's anger is more or less permanent. The failure of Lal Singh Chaddha will only further it.

So, what’s next for Bollywood?

The mother of all validations is up for release next month. If the combination of Ranbir Kapoor, Alia Bhatt, Amitabh Bachchan, Nagarjuna, with a cameo from Shah Rukh Khan, and backed by Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions cannot get the audiences wooed, the alarm bells would be rung across the Mumbai film city. These are testing and troubling times for the industry, but then they themselves are to be blamed for it.

Today, Bollywood sank a little deeper. Where’s the buoyancy going to come from?