Akshay Kumar's Toilet: Ek Prem Katha (TEKP) has registered wonderful collections at the domestic box office and ended the dry spell of Bollywood industry which suffered huge losses in the last seven months.
This has been the worst year in the annals of the Hindi film industry. Several big ticket movies were released in the last seven months. But only two movies turned out to be big hits -- Jolly LLB 2 and Badrinath Ki Dulhania, while most of the films failed miserably at the box office. Many of them caused huge losses to their distributors. The dry spell started right from the very first month of this year.
Big budget movies like Raees starring Shah Rukh Khan and Kaabil starring Hrithik Roshan were released in the theatres on January 25. They were expected to be the first big money spinners of the year, but both turned out to be duds at the box office. Most-hyped releases including Rangoon, Phillauri, Noor, Maatr, Raabta, Jagga Jasoos and Munna Michael met the same fate at the ticket counters in the next three months.
It was the dubbed version of Baahubali 2 that put the Bollywood industry to shame by creating the new club of Rs 500 crore movies. A couple of small budget films like Hindi Medium and Sachin A Billion Dreams fared well at the box office in May, but they were not enough to make the ailing industry prosperous. This month witnessed new additions like Hindi Medium, Meri Pyaari Bindu, Sarkar 3 to the list of flop movies.
The Hindi film industry continued to witness a series of failures in the months of June, July and the first week of August. What shocked the industry the most was the failure of Tubelight starring Salman Khan and Jab Harry Met Sejal starring Shah Rukh Khan. Both the films utterly failed at the box office, forcing their distributors to demand the producers for compensations for the huge losses.
The disheartened industry was eagerly looking forward to the release of Akshay Kumar's Toilet Ek Prem Katha. However, the movie has brought cheers to the Hindi film fraternity by receiving a good opening at the box office and a strong word of mouth helped it go from strength to strength on the following days. Taran Adarsh tweeted: "#ToiletEkPremKatha has pumped oxygen in the lungs of an ailing film industry... The dry spell at the BO ends finally! #TEPK."
Toilet Ek Prem Katha has collected Rs 63.45 crore net at the Indian box office in four days. The film is faring well on Independence Day holiday and is likely to collect over Rs 20 crore at the domestic box office on its fifth day. Taran Adarsh tweeted: "#ToiletEkPremKatha is UNSTOPPABLE... It's a WAVE that grows with each passing day... MASSIVE Tue [Independence Day] on the cards... #TEPK."
As per its current pace of collection, Toilet Ek Prem Katha will cross Rs 100-crore mark at the domestic box office in the first week. It will be the second Hindi film to achieve this feat this year after Tubelight (106.86). But unlike the Salman Khan starrer, the Akshay Kumar film has been made with a small budget and it has already made some profits to its distributors in the domestic market in four days.
