Are Indian Box Office Collection Reports Reliable?

This is a compilation of some randomly selected media reports and people's opinions about Indian box office data for Bollywood movies or Hindi cinemas.

This is a compilation of some randomly chosen media reports and people's comments regarding Indian box office statistics for Hindi or Bollywood films.

Disclaimer:

Let’s start with the June 27, 2016’s report of livemint.com/Mint¹.

As per this report, there is no reliable source that provides information on movie box office receipts for the 103-year-old Indian cinema industry.

Surprisingly, Pooja Bhatt [reportedly, she is the daughter of Indian film (also known as Bollywood) director, producer and screenwriter Mahesh Bhatt²] once tweeted the following on February 27, 2022 from her official account³.

Quote-Unquote

Buying seats/power and ‘horse-trading’ as it is so eloquently called by experts is no different from a filmmaker buying tickets to shows and putting a ‘house full’ board outside an empty cinema hall. Lies that are eventually being told,sold to oneself.

Even India's one of the leading entertainment (which includes Bollywood as well) journalism platform published the following report⁴ on February 06, 2017 about the Bollywood Box Office numbers.

The following question stayed with me after reading this report of Film Companion.

Quote-Unquote

How does one even get authentic figures (of Bollywood movie’s Box Office collections) when the process of calculating them is flawed and primitive?

You may also refer the following March 07, 2022’s report

of Outlook⁵ (www.outlookindia.com) by Yashika Mathur to understand the reality of the latest marketing gimmick of success parties held within days of the release of film.

Now, let’s have a look into the latest interesting case of the Bollywood movie/Hindi cinema, Brahmastra and the confusing box office numbers.

Republic News shared the tweets of the people showing pictures of almost empty theatres in its September 10, 2022’s report⁶ about Brahmastra movie.

On the contrary, some news channels like NDTV⁷ called Brahmastra movie, (which is reportedly a Rs 410 crore budget movie) a hit based on just first day worldwide collections of just Rs 75 crore.

Furthermore, while some people shared pictures of nearly empty theaters (on Twitter), some online websites, such as Bollywood Hungama⁸, stated that this movie (with a Rs 410 crore⁹ budget) had collected Rs 37.50 crore in India on its first day.

Interesting, isn't it? What’s the reality? Who is telling the truth?

Ending note.

So, finally I am ending this article, and leaving you with a question: Are indian box office collection reports really reliable?

Anyway, you may also read: About The Boycott Bollywood Movement

Kindly feel free to share this article for the mass awareness purpose.

Footnotes (referring to the archived history of the following links on popular free archiving sites is recommended for the obvious reasons)

1. Livemint.com/Mint's report on Indian Box Office.

2. A controversy of Mahesh Bhatt and Pooja Bhatt.

3. Tweet of Pooja Bhatt.

4. Filmcompanion's report on Bollywood Box Office numbers.

5. Outlook India's report on Indian film's success parties.

6. A Republic News report on Brahmastra movie.

7. NDTV's report on Brahmastra’s (reportedly a Rs 410 crore budget movie) first day worldwide collection.

8. First day domestic collection report of Brahmastra by Bollywood Hungama.

9. Estimated budget of Brahmastra movie as per Wikipedia.