Shadda Box-Office Over Hype!

While several records were broken over it’s first 7 days of release including it making Rs. 17.7 Crore in the first week beating the all time record holder Carry On Jatta 2, it’s not a fair comparison when Shadda released on 500 prints and over 300 screens in India like no other Punjabi film before.

By R. Paul Dhillon

While Diljit Dosanjh fans have come out in full force for his new film Shadaa after a long gap as he has not had a Punjabi film out in over a year but the hype surrounding it breaking all Punjabi films box office records (also first day) in India was overdone by Diljit himself and the makers in order to over hype the film.

While several records were broken over it’s first 7 days of release including it making Rs. 17.7 Crore in the first week beating the all time record holder Carry On Jatta 2, it’s not a fair comparison when Shadda released on 500 prints and over 300 screens in India like no other Punjabi film before.

And even with hundreds of extra prints in it’s bag, Shadda barely beats the Gross box office of Carry On Jatta by only 9 lakhs ($18,000) – Shadda 3.10 crore and Carry On Jatta first day opening of 3.01Crore). But 500 prints is a lot of prints so the box office comparisons are not really valid with Carry On Jatta but it did beat the biggest box office grosser COJ by 24 lakhs with the net gross of 2.60 Crore to COJ’s 2.36 Crore. (In India they have net and gross figures due to the taxes not being counted in the ticket price as those go to the government and not to the producer-exhibitors).

While Shadda featuring true Punjabi film superstar Diljit Dosanjh is definitely a shot in the arm the Punjabi film box office needed after a number of big star flops like Gippy Grewal’s Chandigarh-Amritsar-Chandigarh and Amrinder Gill’s Laiye Je Yaarian and the absolute disaster Munda Faridkotia with Roshan Prince which may not even recover it’s release costs, the Shadda box office hype is unnecessary and undeserving as superstar like Diljit needs to deliver a 4 crore plus first day numbers to justify the hype.

I’m sure the film is entertaining and well directed by Jagdeep Sidhu, who also wrote and directed the sleeper hit Qismat (although local promoters didn’t show Shadda to real critics instead just to the usual suck-up media) but from the trailer it looks like an average film for Dosanjh’s large legion of fans who’ve obviously came out to support the comedy.

But give the box office hype a rest for now as Punjabi cinema needs to go much higher with the bigger films while getting an average for low to medium budget films to survive in the long term.