Bahubali 2 has broken every record of Indian cinema possible. Just its Hindi collection is expected to touch more than Rs450 crore and that is 75 crores more than the current record holder, Dangal. Add the other southern languages plus the overseas collections, the movie has comfortably beaten the Rs1000 crore mark by raking in as much as Rs1250 crore. That is again many hundreds of crore more than any existing record. Such mindboggling numbers have never been seen earlier in Indian cinema.
In fact, just the second week’s collections of the movie beat the total domestic collection of Shah Rukh Khan’s Raees. Dangal however, saw a surprising surge recently in its revenues following a release in China which drew in unexpected crowds, taking it also close to the Rs1000 crore mark, though it is yet to be seen whether the number will be breached. Such huge revenues must be heartening because it shows that Indian cinema is becoming exponentially lucrative and big ambitious projects are doing justice to their potential.
There is however, still the question of the vast majority of them flopping because of poor formulaic productions. The creative surge needs to translate across the breadth of the system before it truly becomes a sustainable change. But what the audience is telling filmmakers is that good work will be rewarded.