2005 saw Bollywood filmmakers experiment with different themes. However, even though all of them won a lot of critical acclaim, many of them were box office failures.
Films like Sehar, My Brother Nikhil, ‘Bose- The Forgotten Hero, ‘Hazaaron Kwahishein Aisi’ – starring Chitrangda (in picture), Maine Gandhi Ko Nahin Mara, ‘Shabnam Mausi’ and My Wife’s Murder won a lot of critical acclaim but failed to set box office on fire.
At the same time, some others like Yahaan, Madhur Bhandarkar’s Page 3, Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Black , Nagesh Kukunoor’s Iqbal and Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s Parineeta received a ‘better-than-average’ response at the box office.
Also well received was Prakash Jha’s Apaharan, a hard hitting film depicting the dark side of the flourishing kidnapping industry in Bihar with police and politicians being hand in gloves, was also well received.
Black Friday, based on the conspiracy and execution of the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts, failed to see the light of the day after being embroiled in legal tangle.
It was also a year when many ‘much-hyped’ ventures like Subhash Ghai’s Kisna, Akbar Khan’s magnum opus Taj Mahal and Ketan Mehta’s Mangal Pandey - The Rising could not live up to their pre-release hype. While Mangal Pandey barely managed to recover its investment, the rest of the films were box-office damp squibs.
The year 2004 may have witnessed a lot of films with sex as their USP succeed at the box office but in 2005 the ’sex sells’ theory fell flat
Movies with a lot of skin show like Fun: Can Be Dangerous, Sheesha, Chahat - Ek Nasha, Rog, Nazar, Aashiq Banaya Aapne and Rain, stemmed the fact that sex was no longer the USP at the box-office.
The fact that sex no longer sells was further underlined by the poor response to Yashraj Films Neal ‘N’ Nikki released at the fag end of the year. In fact, Neal n Niki proved to be the biggest disaster for Yashraj Films after Lamhe of 1993.
