Bollywood Faces Loss Of At Least 500 Crores Due To Corona Virus Menace, Stares At A Weekly Loss Of 80 Crores Ahead

This isn’t something that anyone was expecting. Typically, Bollywood does face a lean period when the IPL is on, the exam season is in process or pre-festival days, like a week or two leading to Diwali. The release dates are planned accordingly so that the biggest and the best of the films get the right release dates. Though there is scampering of slots even then, the big guns do arm their way into getting the best of the deals and audiences benefit out of it as well.

However, how does one plan for a pandemic like corona virus which arrives totally unannounced and results in practically a global shutdown? This is where the best of the theories and predictions do for a toss, something that is resulting in a loss of around 500 crores just for Bollywood and that too during the month of March and early April.

 The biggest casualty that the industry is facing today is the postponing of Sooryavanshi. The Akshay Kumar starrer, which sees the actor collaborating with Rohit Shetty for the first time ever, has been pushed ahead indefinitely with the makers (rightly) announcing ‘safety first’. Of course the fact that Delhi theatres have been shut till 31st March has had a major role to play as well in this decision making.The film, which was supposed to have an early release on Tuesday, 24th March, could have potentially brought in around 150 crores by 31st March. Now one would have to wait for these fireworks for a much longer timeframe.

 Meanwhile, Baaghi 3 has faced the heat already. This is one film that could have comfortably gone past the 150 crores mark if not for the corona virus scare. First its opening weekend was impacted in a big way and then the weekdays saw lesser than optimal footfalls. Despite that the film managed to be a decent success at least. However, one wonders how much loss it is going to bear (in reference to the profits that it would gained) had the run been uninterrupted. Guess it would be 40-50 crores for the film when the final tally would be put together.

On the other hand the last new release Angrezi Medium faced maximum heat. The Irrfan Khan and Kareena Kapoor Khan starrer decided to stick to its release date, though in hindsight it would have helped had it chosen to arrive on a later date, especially after it was becoming more and more clear that there would be a challenge to screen it in theatres and then entice audiences to queue up for it. Result? While one waits to see where does it eventually land up, at least 25 crores loss is on the cards for Angrezi Medium.

While this is the scenario for the month of March, the heat would continue right into April as well since Ranveer Singh’s biggie ‘83, which was supposed to release on 10th April, has been pushed ahead indefinitely as well. This one again was a potential 150 crores grosser at the least, something which would now have to wait for another week. Add to that the good run of Sooryavanshi that could well have contributed to around 100 crores more in April and Bollywood is already staring at a loss to the tune of around 500 crores.

One just hopes that situation comes back to normalcy sooner than later. If one goes by the statistics, 2018 had seen over 4000 crores been accumulated by Hindi releases. That’s an average of 80 crores per week. With a mix of big, medium and small films set to arrive one after another from mid-April onwards as well, this is an average loss that Bollywood will face week after week.