Liger producer Charmme Kaur has spoken out about the back-to-back box office failures in Bollywood and how it’s a ‘scary situation’ at the moment. Charmme’s own film Liger was met with a lukewarm response at the box office as it was released last week on Thursday. The film, that was also a big release in Hindi last week, managed to collect just Rs. 4.50 crores (Hindi version) on Friday. While the film’s release date was 25th August, it only had limited screen count on Thursday. On 25th, it had collected just Rs. 1.25 crores.
“People have access to better content in one click just by sitting at home. The whole family can watch the biggest budget films on television, and until you don’t really excite them, they aren’t coming to the theatres,” Charmme told Free Press Journal. “But, this is not the case in Bollywood. In August, three Telugu films – Bimbisara, Sita Ramam, and Karthikeya 2 – did phenomenally well, which made Rs. 150–170 crores. It happened in the same country. It is difficult to understand since it doesn’t mean people in the South are crazy for films. It is a scary and depressing situation.”
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She further spoke out about how multiple delays in the release of Liger impacted the film. “We started the first schedule of Liger in January 2020, we met Karan Johar in 2019, and it has come out in 2022. We held back from coming to theatres for three years as we were extremely confident that Liger was a theatrical release irrespective of the first and second lockdowns, third wave, or theatres opening to 50 percent occupancy. It was our responsibility to let other major films, such as RRR and Pushpa: The Rise, come out first. Then, we lost summer and rain arrived, so we had to release on August 25. We faced constant hurdles, but we never gave up.”
In association with Puri connects, Liger was produced jointly by Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions. Liger, also starring Ananya Panday, is available in theatres in Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam.
