Many films in Bollywood are known as classics today, but little known fact is that they never made money when they were initially released. These include the likes of Mera Naam Joker (1970) and Andaz Apna Apna (1994). The 2020s version of these classics would be the movies that bombed at the box office but got a love of love when they eventually made their way to OTT platforms.
5 Bollywood Movies That Were Box-Office Flops But Hit On OTT
5 of such box office flops that found acceptance on streaming.
Laal Singh Chaddha
The biggest movie to fit into this category is Advait Chandan’s 2022 Hindi adaptation of Forrest Gump, Laal Singh Chaddha. The film, starring Aamir Khan and Kareena Kapoor, was released at a stressful time when there were calls to boycott Bollywood. But when it was released later in the year on Netflix India, it got a lot of praise from the audience.
Dhak Dhak
Tarun Dudeja’s street film from last year archived the motorbike excursion of four ladies, from shifting foundations and ages, to Ladkah. Since the trailer of the film was dropped by the studio just a short time before the delivery, co-maker Taapsee Pannu had made sense of that it was just a custom for the studio’s benefit to deliver it in venues as a feature of its arrangement with Netflix India.
Sonchiriya
Abhishek Chaubey’s pensive dacoit drama starring Sushant Singh Rajput, Bhumi Pednekar, and Manoj Bajpayee among others released before the pandemic in 2019, but didn’t work wonders at the box office.
Pinky Faraar
Dibakar Banerjee’s last directorial, starring Arjun Kapoor and Parineeti Chopra, was released when theatres had just started accommodating theatrical releases after the lockdown. After a very brief run in March 2021, it found a home on Prime Video India, where it got its critical due.
An Action Hero
Before Ayushmann Khurrana delivered a bonafide box office hit with Dream Girl 2 last year, he starred in Anirudh Iyer’s action flick An Action Hero, where he played an action star stuck in a real-life chase from one of his audience members. The film failed to launch at the box office but got rave reviews when it was released on Netflix India.
The domino effect in theatrical releases caused by the COVID-19 pandemic led to a lot of films underperforming at the box office but getting their due on OTT.