Box Office is a dicey ground for quality films. More often than not, the perfect recipe of a good film and a box office success cannot be attained. And it is sparse for a qualitatively good film to resonate the same success in terms of its income.

In a chat with Ayushmann Khurrana, who shot to fame with Shoojit Sircar’s Vicky Donor that was the surprise superhit that year, we delved more about the importance of box office numbers for younger actors. Khurana was plain in stating, “I don’t understand box office number man! I was really bad in Maths. I flunked in my pre-boards in Mathematics, so you can imagine.”

So does that mean box office is not relevant at all? He said, “Yes it is. If your film is a box office hit your market value increases. But the success depends relatively on the production value of your film. Like Vicky Donor‘s production budget was 4 crores and it earned nearly 45 crores. The equation was nearly 10 times. If a film is made on 60 crores and it earns 100 crores, definitely if pitted together Vicky Donor makes a bigger hit. 100 crores is just a number, it is the ratio which matters eventually.”

Dhoom 3 and Bewakoofiyaan movie poster

The superstars and the kings of the industry are living on bigger values. Is that intimidating for him or more relevant? The actor elaborates, “The numbers like 227, 283 is all relevant for the industry to grow for sure. If Dhoom 3 worked out pretty well, it will affect my film also. It is the same production house. So it was eventually a cycle in which that money is making Adi (Aditya Chopra) invest more money for my film.”

The actor went on to say, “I have a three film deal with Yash Raj. I would always love the Yash Raj films to do well – 300 crores, 400 crores and beyond. We will be happier, our films will be better, forthcoming films will do well, marketing will be better. So its all a cycle which will be instrumental in making the industry thrive overall. From the production head to the spotboy everybody will be faring better monetarily. But having said that there is a strong urge and demand for content based cinema in the industry especially in the urban centres which is the reason why a lot of edgy content is coming these days. Such content helps the industry by gathering more eyeballs internationally.”

But masala films are mostly looked down upon by media as mindless waste. Ayushmann disagrees, “It is an interesting phase for Hindi cinema where every genre is working. There is an audience for every genre technically. Filmmaking is afterall a business where the focus is on earning a lot of money. The audiences they are catering to is huge. There are people who would prefer watching a masala film over a Lunchbox . It really depends. 70% in India is primary sector and they all watch masala films.”

Funnily Ayushmann traced an interesting co-relation between Dhoom 3 and his small venture Bewakoofiyaan. We all take pleasure in trashing masala films and it is very baffling to see the same films earn good moolah. Like I always say a film’s great monetary performance is obviously benefiting the entire industry at large. Ayushmann content with his 3-film deal seems ecstatic that Dhoom 3 was a success.

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