Films Before Figures: The Most Beautiful Perspective

The post-COVID era has brought several shifts in the film industry—many of them positive—but one of the more unfortunate trends to emerge is the growing obsession with box office numbers.

Conversations today seem to revolve less around the quality of a film and more around how much it earned. Fans now eagerly pit their favorite superstars against each other, using box office collections as the ultimate measure of success.

Of course, commercial performance is a critical part of filmmaking—it sustains the industry—but is that all a film should be judged by? Does a ₹500-600 crore collection automatically mean the film is good?

Has cinema been reduced to a numbers game? It’s important to pause and reflect on these questions and dig a little deeper into what truly defines a film's worth.

The Box Office Obsession

Over the past five years, the term “Pan-India” has become one of the most dominant buzzwords in Indian cinema. A select few films have successfully broken through their regional markets to captivate audiences across the nation. What initially appeared to be a blessing now seems, in some ways, to have become a double-edged sword.

S. S. Rajamouli’s Baahubali: The Beginning and Baahubali 2: The Conclusion were the trailblazers of this Pan-India wave. These films didn’t just bring together stars from different industries; they marked the beginning of grand multi-starrer projects that united North and South Indian cinema on an unprecedented scale.

Baahubali: The Beginning grossed over ₹650 crore worldwide, while its sequel, Baahubali 2: The Conclusion, went on to earn a staggering ₹1788 crore globally, becoming the highest-grossing Indian film at the time, just behind Dangal. Together, the franchise amassed over ₹2460 crore worldwide.

While Dangal might have topped the charts in terms of revenue, the cultural and cinematic impact of Baahubali was unmatched. It reshaped the business landscape, encouraging cross-industry collaborations and fostering a sense of unity among the various film industries in India. Audiences began exploring the previous works of the actors, directors, and technicians involved, fueling a new appetite for films beyond linguistic and regional boundaries.

This momentum gave rise to an era where stars from all corners of the country joined forces to create Pan-India spectacles. With these collaborations, the scale of productions, budgets, and expectations skyrocketed. Audiences now crave grander worlds, bigger visuals, and fresh cinematic experiences. However, along with this rise came an intense obsession with box office numbers.

Conversations around films increasingly revolve around how much they collected on opening day, in their first weekend, or whether they joined the ₹100, ₹500, or ₹1,000 crore club.

While commercial success is vital, it’s concerning that the artistic merit of a film is often reduced to its financial performance. Success is increasingly measured by the hundreds of crores a film collects, often overshadowing the artistic value of the story itself. In many ways, cinema is turning into a numbers game, where the conversation focuses more on financial milestones than on storytelling, performances, or craft. This obsession risks pushing filmmakers to chase scale over substance, potentially leaving original, meaningful narratives behind.

“STOP JUDGING FILMS BY B-O NUMBERS. Terrible films sometimes make a lot of money and good films make less money. Focus on your experience of the film as an audience and not on the film’s collections. Focus on whether the film was worth the price of your ticket not on whether the price of the film star should go up or down.” – Hansal Mehta (director of Aligarh, Faraaz)