While the year 2015 saw the creation of the 300 crore club, there were also many small films that
performed extremely well at the box office.
Gone are the days when only big films were awaited and accepted by the audiences. Now, the
audiences are very open to small budget films as well that are starring smaller actors and not shot at
exotic international locations.
In fact small films too have a fixed set of audience just like there is a fixed set of audience for the big
event films. The audiences of these small budget films step in the theatres with the expectation of good
content films which the industry has delivered this year.
Films like Dum Laga Ke Haisha, Talvar, Hunterrr, Margarita With A Straw and Manjhi have not only
received a lot of appreciation from the audiences and critics for the content, but also garnered good box
office collections.
Talvar, a film based on the double murder Noida case starring Irrfan Khan, Neeraj Kabi, Konkana Sen and
Sohum Shah received a lot of accolades even at film festivals and collected a total of 35 crore NET.
Meghna Gulzar shares "For a film like Talvar, which deals with a sensitive subject, it wouldn't be ideal to
have a conventional or sensationalist approach to it. Moreover for the film to do good business, it was
important that we adopted a pragmatic approach to the production, and unique marketing and
promotional strategies to widen the reach of the film. Since the film is based on a true incident, the plot
of the film was already known to the audiences. However, the real challenge was to draw them to the
theatres which was achieved by an unconventional communications and marketing plan." Prabhat
Choudhary of Spice, a premium Marketing Communications Agency associated with Talvar along With
majority of the below mentioned films agrees with Meghna's thoughts.
Dum Laga Ke Haisha, a film starring Ayushmann Khurrana and newcomer Bhumi Pednekar was set in a
small town and was widely appreciated for the strong story and simplistic portrayal. The film collected a
total of 33 crore NET.
Hunterrr, a coming of age film by debut director Harshvardhan Kulkarni, starring Gulshan Devaiah,
Radhika Apte and Marathi actress, Sai Tamankar found a big audience too and collected 13.50 crore
NET. Harshvardhan Kulkarni shares, `The biggest challenge that we faced during Hunterrr was at the
very last stage. How do you make Hunterrr a reckoning force amidst other bigger & gigantic films
releasing around the same time? The success of Hunterrr is a testimony of us finally finding the right
pitch to reach a much wider audience.` Spice, a Marketing Communications Agency who was associated
with majority of this year's small budget films, including Hunterrr agrees with Director Harshvardhan.
Manjhi, another real life story starring the two actors known for their performances, Nawazuddin
Siddiqui and Radhika Apte and NH10 starring Anushka Sharma and Rajkumar Rao made a mark at the
Box Office.
Wednesday, December 23, 2015 11:38 IST