The recent furore over Maddock Films’ box office reporting for films like Sky Force and Bhool Chuk Maaf reveals a disturbing trend that’s threatening to blow the lid off Bollywood’s numbers game.
Tickets are being heavily discounted – sometimes as low as ₹20-25 – while the reported collections are based on an Average Ticket Price (ATP) of ₹250, creating a huge gap between actual revenue and the numbers being fed to the public and the industry.
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This along with block bookings and aggressive discount offers is artificially inflating opening day and weekend numbers.
For example Bhool Chuk Maaf is expected to open at ₹5 crore but with 49,000+ advance bookings and widespread discounting the actual earnings could be a fraction of the headline number.
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Same was seen with Sky Force where trade analysts and box office trackers were flagging suspiciously high numbers despite low audience turnout and ₹25 ticket offers everywhere.
Such tactics may create short term buzz and make films look more successful than they are but it erodes trust within the trade and among the audience.
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The industry’s credibility is at stake when box office numbers become a marketing tool rather than a transparent measure of success.
Filmmakers can set ticket prices but reporting inflated collections based on notional ATPs is misleading and self defeating.
The audience as always is smarter than the industry gives it credit for – and this manufactured hype will only alienate the very people it’s trying to impress.
