Brahmastra had created an excellent buzz before it hit theatres across the globe on 9th Sept 2022. The Ayan Mukherji directorial was in news mainly due to 5 reasons- a huge budget spent on spectacular visuals, chartbuster music, Ranbir-Alia pair, Shah Rukh Khan’s cameo and last but not least, the boycott trends against the film on social media. This ridiculous army, popularly known as the boycott gang, did everything possible to pull the film down. This time they not only did target the actors and producers but also targeted their families by spreading hatred and fake narratives based on their old interviews.
This boycott gang thought that Aamir Khan’s ‘Laal Singh Chaddha’ tanked at the box office because of their hard work on social media, and thus they were very sure that Brahmastra, too, would feel the heat. But they were wrong. The husband-wife duo of Ranbir Kapoor and Alia Bhatt destroyed their illusion and intentions. Despite meeting with mixed to negative reviews by popular film critics, Brahmastra emerged as a success at the box office.
Brahmastra broke several records at the box office. It registered the second highest booking post-pandemic as it sold 3.03 Lakh tickets. This was enough to tell that audiences don’t care about these boycott calls on social media. If your content excites them, they’ll be happy to spend their money on your product. As I said already, when Brahmastra was released on 9th Sept, it met with mixed to negative reviews by famous film critics as well as audiences. Trade pundits thought that this film would surely drop on Saturday and Sunday and might just end up putting a decent weekend total. But even they were wrong.
Brahmastra put a record-breaking weekend at the box office, thanks to the interesting plot, super hit music, crackling chemistry of the lead and most importantly, the stupendous visuals. However, I do have my complaints with the film regarding tepid screenplay and terrible dialogues. I have written about the same in detail in my review of the film. But that’s a different discussion. If you want to see how much people are excited to watch this film, just check the Book My Show app and search for the tickets on 23rd Sept (National Cinema Day). More than two lakhs tickets have been sold already. And there are still two more days to go. Of course, the lower ticket prices (ticket price across all national chains will be rupees 75 on 23rd Sept) has played a vital role in this but at the same time, this also shows that people are interested in watching the film. And that’s bad news for the boycott gang.
Let’s talk about the Box Office success of Brahmastra. The film opened to a worldwide gross of rupees 75 crores on day 1, and in 10 days, it clocked a worldwide total of rupees 360 crores. Also, the film is now the highest-grossing Bollywood film of 2022 worldwide. The record was held by Vivek Agnihotri’s ‘The Kashmir Files’. Looking at the current trend, I expect the film to put a lifetime total of around 440-450Cr worldwide. If we talk about the film’s collection only in Hindi, then the film will soon cross the 250 crore mark and will be officially declared a box office hit. There is again this narrative being spread that the film is made on a budget of 410 crores, and how can they call it a hit so soon?
If you also have this question, please understand that 410 crore is not the budget of Brahmastra alone. This amount has been spent on the Brahmastra trilogy, i.e. all 3 films in the series. It’s an investment made in the trilogy. Producers now will have to spend much lesser on the following 2 parts. I will write a separate article to explain this process and the deals in detail. For now, just understand that the film is a success.
Brahmastra has proved that boycotting gang is not at all impactful. No negativity on social media can harm your film if you offer exciting content. This Brahmastra by Ayan Mukherji has successfully destroyed the boycott-Astra. Make good films, market them well, keep in check the ticket prices and audiences will shower their love on your films. Celebrate cinema!