'Pathaan, Animal Earning Rs 1,000 Cr Is Bogus'

'Ranbir Kapoor has only one film as does Salman Khan.'
'Hrithik Roshan only has War 2 in hand.'
'Ranveer Singh has no film on floors today.'

The year so far has been bad for Bollywood at the box office.

And with Sarfira, the flop trend continues.

'#Sarfira is Akshay's 13th flop in a row. From hero he has become zero. Once again he can become a hero. All he has to do is remove the zero from his remuneration and charge only 9 crores per film,' trade analyst Amod Mehra had tweeted on X.

Mehra has monitored the Hindi film box office for many years and gives his reasons for its dismal state.

"Today, they are saying a movie like Srikant did Rs 50 crore business. Did anyone cross-check that figure? The answer is no because there is no reality check in the film industry," Amod Mehra tells Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com.

We thought the film industry was on the verge of revival after hits like Pathaan, Jawan, Animal and Gaddar 2. But once again, movies are flopping right, left and centre. Why is that?

I maintain my stance since last year. They have been saying that these films have earned around Rs 1,000 crore (Rs 10 billion) but it's all bogus.

The whole world has come to know that these figures are manipulated.

We do not have any authentic source to tell us the actual figures.

The producer of a film puts out some figures and the media publishes that.

Who verifies such figures?

But everyone is saying that Pathaan, Jawan and Animal are hits.

I have one question to those who say it has become such a big hit: Show the GST figure in terms of ticket sales of these films.

GST is a legal figure and we will calculate the money collected for that film. But no one is giving GST figures.

You then have a samosa critic who is hand-in-glove with the producers declaring a film hit as soon as it is released.

Earlier, producers would publish in newspapers the movie's show timings for which they used to incur a huge expense. Now, they don't do that.

Rather than spending Rs 1 crore on newspaper advertisements in say, the Mumbai circuit, they buy out film critics by telling them to give good star ratings.

When they get a good star rating, they promote those ratings on Instagram handles free of cost.

Today, they are saying a movie like Srikant did Rs 50 crore (Rs 500 million) business.

Did anyone cross check that figure?

The answer is no because there is no reality check in the film industry.

People are being paid to give a good feeling to everyone that film industry is getting revived but the fact is that film industry khatam ho rahi hai (it is getting finished).

Do you mean we are making lesser movies now?

There are rumours in the market that many films that were to go on floors have folded up.

Ranbir Kapoor has only one film in hand, as does Salman Khan.

Hrithik Roshan only has War 2 in hand.

Aamir Khan is doing his own film, Sitare Zameen Par, and then Lahore with Sunny Deol. He has reduced himself to a character role.

Ranveer Singh has no film on floors today. There is Singham, where he has a guest role, which will release in Diwali.

Today, an actor like Ayushmann Khurrana has no films.

Shah Rukh Khan is doing only one film where he is launching his daughter.

The question arises, why is this happening? The answer is obvious: There is no income.

The only actors who are working are Ajay Devgn and Akshay Kumar, who have done deals with satellite channels or OTT for their films.

So suppose if 100 films were made in a year earlier, how many films are being made today?

Counting the number of films made every year will not make any difference. Films that are made need to be prominent.

There are many small (budget) films being made for OTT.

The ratio has not reduced. What has reduced are the number of big films being made.

• Part II of the Interview: 'Bollywood Won't Revive!'