One doesn’t need to be a rocket scientist to understand how disastrous Aamir Khan’s latest venture, ‘Thugs of Hindostan’ has been. Directed by Vijay Krishna Acharya and starring Aamir Khan, Amitabh Bachchan, Fatima Sana Shaikh etc. in principal roles, the movie, despite a bumper opening on Day 1, has officially tanked at the box office, failing to even recover its own budget in more than two weeks.
However, to everyone’s surprise, Aamir Khan took complete responsibility of the failure, and he apologized to the masses for the massive failure of his project. To quote him, ‘I think we went wrong and I would like to take full responsibility for that. We tried very hard to make a good film and we didn’t hold back from putting in our entire effort, but somewhere or the other we went wrong’. There are people who have liked the film and we are thankful to them, but they are in a minority. Most people didn’t like our film, we are aware of that.’
Aamir Khan was addressing the audience at the press conference of Cinestaan India’s Storyteller Script Contest 2018-19, of which he is the presiding jury member along with celebrated screenwriters Juhi Chaturvedi and Anjum Rajabali.
He added, “I want to apologize to my audience also as this time I wasn’t able to entertain them. I know people came in theaters with a lot of expectations but they didn’t enjoy the film. Audience is free to say what they feel about the film. What I can say is that we certainly tried our level best and I am feeling really bad that we didn’t succeed in entertaining the audience. So, next time we will try harder.”
For those unaware, ‘Thugs of Hindostan’ had released on 8 November 2018. Touted to be a Diwali success, the movie failed on all fronts – from content to entertainment to even the capacity to pull crowds. The movie earned Rs. 50 crore on Day 1, the highest for any Indian film ever released, but as the days passed, the collections only fell deeper. The film has performed so badly, that the distributors demanded a refund for their investments.
As of now, Thugs of Hindostan is struggling to register even Rs. 10 lakhs per day at the box office. Officially, this is the first major box office failure for Aamir Khan in the last 13 years, the last flop being ‘Mangal Pandey – The Rising’, which had failed to rake revenue on almost the same parameters as that of ‘TOH’.
However, it is rather welcoming to know that Aamir Khan acknowledges the failure of his movies. By doing so, he has joined the ranks of actors like Rajinikanth, who take full responsibility of the failure of their movies, as in the case of ‘Lingaa’, where Rajinikant not only apologized, but also compensated the distributors from his own pocket. This also serves as a lesson to people like Imtiaz Ali, who not only take the audiences granted, but also behave in an arrogant manner when their movies tank, as in the case of ‘Jab Harry Met Sejal.’