Dhadak Box Office: Ishaan Khatter-Janhvi Kapoor's Sairat Remake is a Disappointment Despite Crossing Rs 100 Crore WW - Here's Why

After facing many controversies, Dhadak finally reached theatres on July 13. The movie starring Ishaan Khatter and Janhvi Kapoor was in the news for many reasons. There are, of course, the promotional factors of being a Karan Johar production, and that it launched two star-kids in Janhvi Kapoor and Ishaan Khatter. Janhvi Kapoor, especially, was in the centre of the spotlight for the sympathy wave for her after the untimely, sad demise of her mother, the late Sridevi. But fans also blamed the makers for exploiting a much loved Marathi film, Sairat, just for commercial purposes.

Everything said and done, when the movie came out, Dhadak was met with surprisingly good reviews and also had a more-than-decent opening, In Dharma Productions' own words, the movie's weekend collections were the highest for any film starring newcomers in the lead, beating their own Student of the Year. As the collections improved, trade sources had already declared it a hit even before Dhadak crossed the Rs 50 crore mark at the domestic box office. Karan Johar had even thrown a success meet for the media by the second week.

As per the last box office update, Dhadak had collected Rs 63.39 crore at the box office. Dharma might be quite happy with their collections, as their below tweet proclaim -

But is the collections worth enough celebrating? Let's face the truth here - For a Bollywood that has been marketed so well, Dhadak has actually underperformed at the box office. Here's why -

Even though we have already compared Dhadak a lot with Sairat, we never talked about the movies from a box office point of view. Sairat, that came out in 2016, was made on a mere budget of Rs 4 crore. The movie was released in just 450 screens in its first week. Marathi films find a good base in their home-ground, Maharashtra, but outside the state, there is very less commercial viability for the cinema.

However, when Sairat completed its final run at the domestic box office, the movie had collected approx more than Rs 100 crore. Looking at the cost-benefit ratio, there is nothing wrong in calling it a true blockbuster.

Now let's consider Dhadak. Since it already has Karan Johar as a producer, the movie gets very good visibility in India (though that doesn't guarantee a hit status, see OK Jaanu and Ungli). Though Dhadak's official budget cost isn't available, certain sources place it at Rs 40 crore with a marketing cost of Rs 10 crore more. The movie got a wide release with 2,235 screens in India and 556 screens overseas, making 2,791 screens in total. Dhadak was heavily promoted before release, and many celebs, like Madhuri Dixit, Varun Dhawan, Sonam Kapoor etc. gave raving reviews to the film. In short, Dhadak was enjoying so many privileges that Sairat never had (many people even call the Nagraj Manjule movie to be a veiled criticism of Bollywood films).

So it feels a lot strange that despite having so many advantages, Dhadak could never manage to catch up to Sairat's box office collections at home. Its worldwide collections many have touched the Rs 100 crore mark, but it is more due to Karan Johar's NRI appeal than the viability of the film. Closer home, there is an impossible task for the film to even cross Rs 80 crore mark (unless the producers massively bloat their collections, as is the practice many a time).

We had also reported about how an insider from Karan Johar's production house had told us that he isn't too happy with the movie's box office collections, despite those many 'happy' tweets. Is this the reason why Student of the Year 2 was shifted from a crowded November 2018 to May 2019 so that they can make the movie stronger in content?

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Aug 01, 2018 06:03 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).