On This Day: Dil v Ghayal Clash

This day thirty one years back saw Dil and Ghayal release on the same day on 22^nd June 1990 and both films proved to be BLOCKBUSTERS. It was one of the rare occasions that two films released together both emerged BLOCKBUSTERS.

Ghayal was the action film but it was Dil that took the lead at the box office from the first day and it remained that way for the first six months. The music of Dil was huge and it was a youth love story for the mass audience. The business of Dil was better than Ghayal by around 20% in all circuits by the end of 1990 except for CP Berar and the South circuits.

The Ghayal story did not finish in 1990 and went on and on. The film had its first repeat run in Mumbai on 27th September 1991 and the response was earth shattering as despite being one year old the film was competing with new blockbuster films.

Ghayal started to catch Dil up in 1991 with strong repeat runs as Sunny Deol consolidated the action image. The business of Ghayal remained lower than Dil in Delhi / UP and East India but in other circuits it caught up and went ahead. It became the highest grossing film of 1990 in early 1992 as it collected almost 1 crore nett in a huge repeat run in Mumbai circuit.

In this repeat run the film collected more in the first week that the first week of the original run and that too when the first run itself had taken a big start. the second week in this run saw an insane 20% increase in collections as they released more prints. Ghayal is the only film to have such high collections in repeat run in any city in one week (not counting some old films released in colour). The film had the better occupancy than all films released in August, September, October and November in 1991 barring Saudagar and Phool Aur Kaante. The repeat run first week was even better than a big film like Lamhe (10.74 lakhs and 82%).

The numbers for the first week in original run and repeat run in Mumbai city of Ghayal are as follows. The repeat run numbers were simply phenomenal.

Mumbai City city (Original Release - 22/06/1990)

Metro - 2,02,142 (HF)

Gaeity - 1,21,660 (HF)

Ganesh - 59,355 (HF)

Bijlee - 59,725 (HF)

Bahar - 1,01,327 (HF)

Topiwala - 85,177 (HF)

Sona - 84,410 (HF)

Akash - 49,784 (HF)

Diamond - 55,622 (HF)

Jai Ganesh - 77,916 (HF)

TOTAL - 8,97,118 (All Cinemas Housefull)

Mumbai city (Re - Release 27/09/91)

Minerva - 1,97,564 (HF)

Gaeity - 1,47,531 (HF)

Satyam - 1,50,134 (HF)

Anupam - 86,492 (HF)

Darpan - 87,424

Sona - 84,312 (HF)

Rupam - 1,04,628 (HF)

Basant - 1,13,926

Akash - 49,786 (HF)

Uday - 80,512 (HF)

TOTAL - 11,02,309 (8 out 11 cinemas HF, 99%)

Ghayal set records in repeat runs. No film from the nineties was even close to it in repeat runs and only Sholay has higher business in repeat runs in the history of Hindi cinema. Ghayal contiuned to have more repeat runs as the Sunny Deol action image consolidated through the nineties and eventually went to 3.25 crore nett plus in Mumbai which was an extraordinary total.

Dil and Ghayal were huge blockbusters with both films clocking up over 2.50 crore footfalls which is around 300 crore nett plus today in terms of business today. The biggest achievement of Ghayal was that it became an iconic film in time. Ghayal had actual results post release as huge crowds turned up to watch repeat runs of the film whenever it was released.