Box Office Disappointments Of 2019: From Kalank To Dabangg 3, Films That Clearly Under-Performed

For Bollywood, the year of 2019 is memorable for many exciting things and one of them is clearly the profits it yielded at the box office. Apart from the business perspective, it was the young brigade including the likes of Ayushmann Khurrana, Kartik Aaryan, Vicky Kaushal, Tiger Shroff and others, who shouldered the industry quite effectively. On the other hand the senior actors- Akshay Kumar, Ajay Devgn, Salman Khan and Hrithik Roshan too, showed their hold over the audience. And a special mention to the ladies of B Town- Kangana Ranaut, Taapsee Pannu, Rani Mukerji and others, who made a mark as the victorious force.

While we have always discussed how lucrative 2019 was for Bollywood, there were some disappointing affairs which clearly didn’t lived up to the expectations. Some of them were really unfortunate as despite being backed by powerful content, couldn’t managed to penetrate a larger section of audience, while others were utter crap.

Let’s take a look at major box office disappointments of 2019:

Sonchiriya

Featuring credible names like Sushant Singh Rajput, Bhumi Pednekar, Manoj Bajpayee and director Abhishek Chaubey, the expectation was always high on this dacoit drama. Content wise, it was high on merit and a pure visual treat for the viewers, exploring the valleys of Chambal. The film’s Bundeli dialogues and extremely niche content proved to be a major obstacle in the box office journey as it just managed a lifetime of 6.60 crores. A sheer bad luck!

Kalank

With banner as huge as Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions and names like Varun Dhawan, Alia Bhatt, Aditya Roy Kapur, Sonakshi Sinha, Sanjay Dutt, Madhuri Dixit and Kunal Kemmu, surrounding the project, extremely high hopes were pinned on this periodic drama. Aggressive promotions further added to the towering expectations at the ticket windows. It did took a flying start of 21.60 crores but failed in sustaining the momentum due to its flawed content and therefore wasn’t able to reap the benefits of extended weekend. It ended its journey at 81 crores, which was way below its mammoth budget.

Student Of The Year 2

Another Dharma Productions’ biggie on the list! It marked the debut of Ananya Panday and Tara Sutaria, thus was very much depended on Tiger Shroff’s star power. While its predecessor was high on chartbuster music and watchable content, this one failed in both departments excluding one or two songs. Tiger’s appeal amongst the youth audience did acquire a double-digit score of 12.06 crores on the opening day, but its lifetime ended on a not-so-impressive note as 70.66 crores came in.

Judgementall Hai Kya

This film was in the news for both good and the bad reasons. While the posters and trailer fetched exciting reactions from cine-goers, the controversies surrounding Kangana Ranaut too were grabbing the eyeballs. The film was highly acclaimed by the critics and received thumbs up from the niche cinema lovers, but that’s all! Judgementall Hai Kya failed to appeal to a larger segment of movie buffs and ended its box office journey with a lifetime of 38.30 crores.

Pal Pal Dil Ke Paas

It marked Sunny Deol’s son, Karan Deol’s big-screen debut and the expectations were quite high with Sunny himself donning the director’s hat. Surprisingly, a huge budget was invested in film’s making and promotions, which eventually didn’t bear fruit. PPDKP was backed by some decent music which gained immense popularity and its old school masala content was touted to work wonders, at least in mass centers. But the film was a flop show since its opening day. It summed up its journey with 4.75 crores collection.

The Sky Is Pink

Featuring Priyanka Chopra, Farhan Akhtar and Zaira Wasim in key roles, the film saw decent promotion coming its way and music too was well received. Further, upon its release, the film witnessed a positive response from both critics and audience alike but somehow failed in capitalizing it as just 15 crores lifetime came in.

Pagalpanti

Another multi starrer project belonging to family-friendly genre i.e. comedy. We all know that Anees Bazmee has mastered the art of handling the no-brainer comedies and is amongst those few credible directors of the industry. Also, the names like John Abraham, Anil Kapoor, Arshad Warsi and Saurabh Shukla were enough for pulling off some decent footfalls. All thanks to sloppy content, the films couldn’t survive too long and exhausted its run at 33.01 crores lifetime.

Panipat

Panipat is amongst the major disappointments of the year and we can’t target the actors or the content of the film here. Featuring Arjun Kapoor, Kriti Sanon and Sanjay Dutt in key roles, the film received decent reviews and positive word-of-mouth as well but failed in making an impact it was expected considering the huge scale and director of Ashutosh Gowariker’s stature handling the film. Currently playing in negligible number of screens, the film is looking to wrap its business around 34 crores.

Dabangg 3

And here comes the last name on the list! The name of Salman Khan, the franchise of Dabangg and superhit duo of director Prabhudheva and Khan coming together after Wanted, were all enough to make this film a sort of a record-breaker. When on the one side, the medium-scaled movies like Uri: The Surgical Strike, Kabir Singh made their entry in 200 crore club like a boss and Tiger Shroff-Hrithik Roshan’s War proved that there’s still a market for action entertainers, Dabangg 3 eventually turned out to be under-performer at the box office. Although it is currently running in theatres with 150 crores* already being made, it is way below the expectations of both fans and trade experts.

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