Bollywood Box Office: Are Makers Obsessed With Holidays & Festive Seasons For Returns?

In the last few years, films like Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani, Jungle Book, Baahubali 2, Fast and Furious 7, Jurassic World and more recently, Avengers: Infinity War proved that a good film appealing to a wide audience will do well at the Box-Office even without getting the additional padding from national holidays’ like Independence Day, Republic Day, Gandhi Jayanti, Dussehra and festive season like Eid, Diwali and Christmas.

While Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani (2013) and Jungle Book (2015) collected approximately Rs 180 crore at the Box-Office in India, Baahubali 2 went on to create history by raking in around Rs 510 crore at the Box-Office in the Hindi Film Market. Recently released summer blockbuster, Avengers: Infinity War has opened better than 95% of the Bollywood film and that too during a non-holiday weekend.

Yes, the film did benefit due to enhanced ticket rates, however that doesn’t take away the fact that it opened to humongous number at the ticket window. This gets us to the point of our article i.e. is Bollywood obsessed with Holiday’s and Festive season?

Well, over the years we have seen producers locking the holiday periods like Eid, Diwali, Christmas, Republic Day and Independence Day way in advance to reap the benefit of the national holiday’s in that period. While there is no denying the fact that the holiday and festive season give an additional mileage to the Box-Office collections of the film by approximately 20 to 25%, however films like Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani, Baahubali 2, Avengers: Infinity War and Jungle Book to name a few prove that a good film with universal content will be lapped up by the audience irrespective of the release date. The audience in our country are looking for wholesome entertainment packaged in a film, and their theatre outing depends majorly on the excitement generated by the theatrical trailer.

Personally, I feel that the benefit provided by the holiday’s in the opening weekend will more or less be covered up by a film in the long run, if it releases on a non-holiday, provided that the content is good, entertaining and has a pan India appeal. Leaving aside the universally loved films mentioned above, even a film like Baaghi 2, which seemed like a wholesome entertainer from the trailer was lapped up by the audience in huge numbers despite releasing during a non-holiday period. And here, we are talking about a film with mixed word of mouth, featuring a young star, which ended up doing in excess of Rs 150 crore at the Box-Office.

On the same lines, even Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Padmaavat is another example of a good film, that did humongous biz at the Box-Office despite getting benefit of merely a single holiday i.e. Republic Day in its lifetime run. It became the first Hindi film to collect in excess of Rs 275 crore during a non-festive period.