'That's within the film itself': Vikramaditya Motwane on box office failure of Kill, Jigra; says Hindi industry in crisis

As Bollywood is struggling to figure out what the audience wants, filmmaker Vikramaditya Motwane said in a recent interview that the Hindi film industry is in a crisis. He said that the underperformance of films such as Kill and Jigra cannot be blamed on the system. 

"I don't think you can put the underperformance to a systemic problem. I think that's within the film itself," Motwane, known for films such as Lootera and Udaan, said in a roundtable hosted by The Hollywood Reporter India. 

Both the films failed to make an impact with the audiences and logged poor ticket sales. 

Karan Johar-backed actioner Kill, featuring Lakshya Lalvani and Raghav Juyal, made a total of only Rs 24.2 crore in India. Alia Bhatt's prison break drama Jigra raked in around Rs 32 crore at the India box office, according to film trade portal Sacnilk. 

Even though Kill and Jigra failed at the box office, the filmmaker, whose last film was Ananya Panday-led CTRL, said that all was not lost, citing Vidhu Vinod Chopra-directorial 12th Fail and Kiran Rao's Laapataa Ladies as examples of movies that worked for the audiences. 

He further said that in the case of Laapataa Ladies, it was evident that Aamir Khan's muscle was put behind the film, adding that it bolstered the chances of the film working at the ticket counters. 

"When a distributor shows confidence in a movie, the people will come and see it. Its pretty simple. It is a law that's been there for years." Laapataa Ladies collected a total of Rs 20.58 crore during its lifetime run at the India box office. The Kiran Rao-directorial has been chosen as India's official submission to Oscars 2025. 

He added that 12th Fail is the best example of a movie within the indie space that augured well with the audiences. 12th Fail ran in theatres for 14 weeks and raked in a total of Rs 56.38 crore in India and made Rs 70.05 crore worldwide. 

Further, Motwane said that everything changed for Bollywood after COVID-19 as the audience was appreciating movies like Masaan and Newton before the pandemic but such films don't work anymore. He mentioned that the Hindi film industry is not good and needs fixing. 

He said that regional film industries -- Malayalam, Telugu, Tamil and Kannada -- are making some progress but the same cannot be said about the Hindi film industry. "As far as I think, the Hindi industry is… I don’t want to say dead, that’s a really strong word.”