AFTER years of dwindling audiences and box office disasters, Bollywood struck back in 2023 with five blockbuster successes that drew audiences around the world back into cinemas.
Fighter, the first high-profile release of 2024, is hoping to carry on that box office momentum. The air force drama has a lot going in its favour, including bringing together A-list superstars Hrithik Roshan and Deepika Padukone for the first time. It is also the next film from Siddharth Anand, after his huge hits War (2019) and Pathaan (2023), and is in the same action genre. Anil Kapoor, who is on a high after the hit film, Animal, is also part of the cast in a key supporting role.
Fighter is due to be released next Thursday (25), coinciding with the Indian Republic Day (26) weekend. The airfight-filled action drama also has a sky-high budget and that is what will ultimately work against it.
According to reports, its budget has spiralled out of control so much that it would have to smash box-office records and do the kind of business a Hrithik headlined movie has never done before, to turn around any kind of meaningful profit.
A lot of the money has been spent on fees for the lead cast and director, which means that not enough was available for the fighter plane sequences to make them look convincing.
As last year’s biggest disaster Adipurush proved, you can no longer give anything sub-standard to the Indian audience, who have already been exposed to world-class special effects in Hollywood films
The gold standard for fighter jet movies has been set by the megahit Tom Cruise starrer, Top Gun: Maverick, and no Indian movie has the budget to match that. So, anything from Hindi cinema will look like a cheap copy, which is what many social media users are already saying.
The spiralling budget and poor special effects are not the only things working against Fighter. Not a single movie with pilots and planes has ever worked in Bollywood before.
A prime example of this is the 2023 superdisaster Tejas – the Kangana Ranaut starrer clocked up shockingly low figures and, as expected, had poor special effects, which paled in comparison to Top Gun: Maverick.
There don’t seem to be any star cameos to save this movie either.
Producers will be hoping that some steamy scenes between the good-looking lead pair and catchy musical numbers will save the day, but that kind of defeats the purpose of a full-on action movie. The notso-originalsounding songs have received a relatively poor response so far. There also isn’t a production house like Yash Raj Films or Red Chillies Entertainment, which can put a powerful marketing plan into place, or generate advance ticket sales through ‘various means’.
All of this is illustrated by the little hype Fighter is generating, despite being one of the most expensive movies ever made in Hindi cinema. It just doesn’t have the buzz of Bollywood films that have gone on to become blockbuster hits. That is why I am fully expecting it to crash, even if it has the benefit of a holiday weekend, good-looking lead stars and a director on a high. That will make Fighter the first big casualty of 2024.
Migrants in a dinghy crossing the English Channel
Sunder Katwala
