Hansal Mehta On Audience’s Obsession With Box Office Numbers: It Started With Amitabh Bachchan

It would not be wrong to say that the Indian audience and filmmakers have a new-found obsession with box office numbers and data. Now director Hansal Mehta, in a year-end roundtable organised by Cinema Express, discussed how he was surprised when relatives at a wedding he attended were talking about how many hundreds of crores a certain film had earned.

He added that such matters should be restricted to the people who’ve invested money in that particular film, and not the general public. He also explained how this public’s fascination for box office data actually originated, while talking about his earlier comment about ‘quest for mass success destroying storytelling‘. 

He said, “As a filmmaker, I will not take up that responsibility. My responsibility, first, is towards what I’m doing. If I think about (profits) I’m doing a disservice to myself, to my work, my craft, to the people working with me.”

He added how box office and data have become the big thing now, and mentioned how his scene cannot be the product of data. “It doesn’t matter if only five people watch. I made Aligarh, and I don’t even remember that film’s box office number. But it remains one of my crowning glories… This discussion around ‘initials’ starred Mr Bachchan. He became this one-man industry, and they started saying that he brings an ‘initial’ amount on Friday,” Mehta said.

Further recalling how films soon started doing silver jubilees and golden jubilees, the filmmaker said that it soon led to everything becoming about the Friday-Saturday business. “Earlier, they used to measure occupancy… And now, it has become a means of subsistence for people who know nothing but numbers. They call themselves critics,” he said.

Meanwhile, ‘Kohrra’ and ‘Paatal Lok’ co-creator Sudip Sharma, who was also a part of the discussion, added, “Data cannot be a reflection of quality… McDonald’s is the highest-selling burger in the world, right? But it’s not the best burger. They’re completely different things.” 

Hansal recently helmed the series ‘Scoop’, and is awaiting the release of his new film, ‘The Buckingham Murders’, starring Kareena Kapoor Khan.