Tubelight has come and is almost gone. The film Flopped at
the box office but still its not a financial disaster like a Broken
Horses, Bombay Velvet, Rock On 2 as there are profits in the producers
book. But the huge problem is the prices paid by the all India
distributors who will loose around 70% of their investments.
The film
reminds of Mrityudaata (1997) which also fetched record prices and then
lost 70% of its investment. That film was a box office disaster as there
was no back up from television and digital rights at that time.
The difference between Mritydaata and Tubelight is that
when Mrityudaata had released the male lead Amitabh Bachchan came back
after a five year break and although the super stardom remained within
the industry, the public had moved on to younger stars like Sunny Deol
and Shahrukh Khan.
The industry is in a bad state as far as box office
collections go and after Tubelight a big HIT is the order of the day.
But there is a silver lining with digital which is the golden egg at
this moment. Amazon and Netflix have come in such a way to India that
even a mega disaster like Noor is close to recovery thanks to digital.
This digital story has come as a life saver for the industry and to kick
this in the teeth could spell doom considering the way the theatre
going audience for Hindi films is going down.
