After a long, long time, people in the trade have no clue why a film, which is being liked by the audience in general, is not working its magic at the box-office. Neither did it take a good start nor did its collections pick up by positive word of mouth. One is talking about Vikram Vedha. With Hrithik Roshan coming on the big screen after three years (his last release was War which hit the screens on 2nd October, 2019), the trade had expected Vikram Vedha to net at least Rs. 18 to 20 crore on the opening day. Their faith was not just on Hrithik’s pulling power but also on the fact that the film co-starred Saif Ali Khan and that the film’s trailer had been unanimously loved. But the film netted only Rs. 9.50 crore on the first day. Such a poor initial, that too for a film which was eagerly awaited by the paying public after they had witnessed the mass-appealing trailer, was unthinkable. What’s equally shocking is that collections did not grow immensely on the second and third days too.
Sometimes, if for some reason, a film does not open as expected, collections grow crazily on the second day if the word of mouth is good. But even that did not happen in the case of Vikram Vedha. The only logic for the poor response to the Rs. 175-crore film seems to be that people had seen the original Tamil film of the same name, of which this is a remake.
But this is not the first Hindi remake of a South film, you are apt to say.
Agreed, this is not the first time that a producer has remade a film made earlier in another language. But the conditions have changed post-lockdown. During the Coronavirus pandemic lockdowns, people have been exposed so much to OTT platforms, satellite channels and even YouTube that it’s not funny. Since buzz about Vikram Vedha being a remake of the Tamil Vikram Vedha had gained a lot of ground, even those who had not seen the original version saw the film before the Hindi remake reached the cinemas. A sizeable chunk of the audience had seen the Tamil original much earlier too — whether on some OTT platform, or on a satellite channel or even on YouTube. OTT platforms offer regional language content with subtitles or dubbed in other languages too. C.P. Berar exhibitor Sanjay Surana told Information, “Several people coming out of my cinema after watching Vikram Vedha were heard complaining that we had released an old film which they had already seen! Obviously, they were referring to the Tamil original which they must’ve seen.”
So now, there is every chance of the target audience having seen the original of a Hindi remake even before the remake lands in the cinemas — as it must have happened in the case of Vikram Vedha. The same thing had happened when Shahid Kapoor’s Jersey had released earlier this year. A lot of people had already seen the original Jersey in Telugu, as a result of which the Shahid Kapoor starrer opened poorly and even later failed to make its mark at the box-office.
All of the above might mean that it’s the end of the era of remakes. With content available on so many platforms and with awareness of all the platforms being so widespread, it is impossible to stop people from consuming content on one or the other platform. Therefore, remaking a South hit may be fraught with dangers. In the case of Vikram Vedha, there was the additional risk of a very heavy budget. It is said that the Tamil original was made at a cost of Rs. 11 crore while the cost of production of the Hindi remake was almost 16 times the cost of the original. So the other lesson to learn from the debacle of Vikram Vedha is that if a film must be remade, it ought to be a moderately priced film and it ought to be remade by keeping the budget controlled rather than by inflating the budget ten or fifteen times. For, the remake is already on a weak wicket because of the availability of the original on several other platforms. In the alternative, the original may be dubbed in various languages and all the versions should be released simultaneously — as is happening these days (Pushpa: The Rise Part 1, RRR, K.G.F. Chapter 2).
Cut back to the pre-COVID days. Kabir Singh, released in 2019, was a remake of the Telugu blockbuster Arjun Reddy. But not only did Kabir Singh open well, it also went on to do blockbuster business. That’s not only because Kabir Singh was a fantastic film but also because despite the knowledge that it was a remake of a Telugu super-hit, not many had seen the original. For, before the pandemic lockdowns, people were not so addicted to OTT platforms or to satellite channels airing South content or even to YouTube.
Whether we like it or not, a lot has changed in the two years of the lockdowns. One such change may be that remakes of South films are now history.