It has never been this bad in theaters. And by ‘this bad’, I mean ‘truly bad collections’ (or the lack of it!) that are on display. As it happens before the arrival of a biggie (and in this case, there are two – Ae Dil Hai Mushkil and Shivaay), there is a horde of small films that clutter around in multiplexes and try to get some sort of screen space. This is what happened a week before and then the story repeated over the weekend gone by as well. All of that only ended up adding on to the red in the report card as Bollywood continued to bleed, what with zilch collections on display.

With not even an average earner on display, the month of October so far has turned out to be the worst of the year. Most of the months (barring May) have seen at least one film doing well at the Box Office. However, all that October has given so far is a dozen odd disasters already.

Box Office - October waits for at least an average runner as it turns out to be worst of the year
Box Office – October waits for at least an average runner as it turns out to be worst of the year

Let’s take a look:

January – Airlift
February – Neerja
March – Kapoor & Sons
April – Baaghi
May – No hit
June – Housefull 3
July – Sultan
August – Rustom
September – M.S. Dhoni – The Untold Story
October* – No hit so far

The names listed here are the biggest grossers of the month that also turned out to be successful ventures for their makers. While Akshay Kumar has dominated in three of the months gone by, Salman Khan has hit it out of the park with his Eid arrival.

Youngsters like Sonam Kapoor, Sidharth Malhotra, Fawad Khan, Alia Bhatt, Tiger Shroff, Shraddha Kapoor and Sushant Singh Rajput have surprised with their films topping the charts for the biggest grossers of the month.

However, the month of May was poor with neither Azhar nor Sarbjit, two of the films that were touted to do well, not quite covering the distance. Ditto for October where the biggest release of the month, Mirzya, turned out to be the biggest disaster of 2016.

While the month has been nothing less than harrowing so far, all eyes are now on Ae Dil Hai Mushkil and Shivaay to turn the tide on 28th October. At least one of these needs to turn out to be a solid hit in order to save Bollywood from any more blushes.

Joginder Tuteja tweets @tutejajoginder

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