Alia Bhatt's Raazi Enters 100 Crore Club, Emerges As Biggest Ever Female Centric Film

Now, this is indeed turning out to be a remarkable feat for Alia Bhatt. Her Raazi has entered the 100 Crore Club and in the process has gone past a series of female-centric films that have managed to do some good business during last few years.

Source: businessworld.in

As a matter of fact her film has emerged as a much bigger success than the ones which featured her counterparts as a central lead. One look at the list below and it pretty much tells the tale:

Alia Bhatt's Raazi - 100 crore (and counting)

Sonam Kapoor's Neerja - 75.65 crore

Priyanka Chopra's Mary Kom - 64 crore

Kangana Ranaut's Queen - 61 crore

Vidya Balan's Kahaani - 59 crore

Each of these films is the ones where the female protagonist has been the only known name and face in the credits and is pretty much running the film on her shoulders. Neerja was a Sonam Kapoor show all the way, Mary Kom had Priyanka Chopra slogging in the ring, Queen was an out and out Kangana Ranaut outing whereas Kahaani had Vidya Balan enact one of her most difficult roles till date.

Incidentally, barring Queen, each of the other four films has been a rather heavy affair with drama and thrills forming a major part of the narrative. On the other hand, Queen had stayed on to be light-hearted for most part of its running duration.

Nonetheless, what's notable is the fact that audiences have lapped up to a serious realistic drama like Raazi which didn't really offer much relief in the narrative and demanded their attention right through the playing time. Of course, Alia Bhatt's performance made it all possible and with director Meghna Gulzar staying honest to the subject, it has all paid dividends.

Source: Indian Express

There have been a few other films too are being tagged as female-centric by a section of media, case in point being Tanu Weds Manu Returns, The Dirty Picture, Piku, Dear Zindagi and Secret Superstar. However, let's start looking at each of these cases as considering these to be a solo lead affair for the leading ladies is actually far from being true.

Let's begin with Tanu Weds Manu Returns. Agreed that it had Kangana Ranaut in the double but by no means can one discount the presence of Madhavan in the film. As a matter of fact, he is in the film's title as well which pretty much tells the tale.

The Dirty Picture had Vidya Balan winning a lot of accolades but how can one ignore the saleability that Emraan Hashmi brought to the film? Moreover, it had Tusshar Kapoor and Naseeruddin Shah in pivotal roles as well. To term Piku as a female-centric film would be truly weird since it had Amitabh Bachchan and Irrfan Khan in principle roles. As for Dear Zindagi and Secret Superstar, these may have been revolved around a female protagonist but then there were Shah Rukh Khan and Aamir Khan no less to support them in their endeavor.

No wonder, it is the success of Raazi that tastes sweeter than any other film because the film has defied all odds and further established that audiences are willing to step into an out and out female-centric affair if there indeed is an impressive story waiting to be told in an engaging manner.