Do women centric films stand a chance at the Indian Box Office?

With Rani Mukerji’s Mardaani opening to an average response, the same old haunting doubts cloud over the industry to ask if women centric movies are capable enough to do good business on their own. Of course the short comings for Mardaani haven’t been too disappointing but when put into a graph with contemporary releases, there seems a distant contrast.

Mardaani opened to a pretty average Friday with around 4 crores going in its kitty, while Saturday and Sunday marking a little growth. The weekend collections for the film stand at around 15 crores with a lot relying on the word of mouth and weekday’s performance. The reports though have been fairly positive with much appreciation for Rani’s sterling performance. The fate of the film will now depend on the money it makes further. Mardaani is a crucial film for film’s director Pradeep Sarkar as well. The acclaimed filmmaker to be honest hasn’t had a credible asset to his name since his debut ‘Parineeta’ and is finding hard to taste success. But you got to hand it to him for having the guts to keep making women oriented films be it Parineeta, Laga Cunari Mein Daag or the latest Mardaani. But what counts at the box office, is not the guts, but the numbers.

While Vidya Balan’s Kahaani in 2012 went on to impress everybody around the world despite being projected as a female film, she couldn’t repeat the same fate lately with Bobby Jasoos falling flat on its feet. The question that follows here up is, Is there no margin for error for a women based film? At a time when films like Kick, Singham Returns, Entertainment are raging huge numbers and money, why do women eccentric films have to go through such a test. Well as they say cinema’s a hero’s business, we have to introspect as a whole if we are not giving the due share to these brave heart ladies.