Stop judging movies by box office numbers: Hansal Mehta

Filmmaker Hansal Mehta said that the box office collection of a film is something very ‘private’ and the moviegoer should only focus on it if it is worth the price of the ticket. He also opined that since bad films could have good box office collections as compared to good films, they shouldn’t be judged by numbers at the ticket counter.

Hansal was replying to a ‘Twitter’ user, who shared the difference between box office figures shared by a film producer and those shared by a trade analyst. The user stated that a producer could share inflated box office figures in some cases and even trade analysts could go wrong with the numbers sometimes. Reacting to it, Hansal wrote, “Bottom line: a film’s box office is nobody’s business. It impacts only those involved in the film in various ways that are purely transactional and essentially private.”

“Stop judging films by B-O (box office) numbers. Terrible films sometimes make a lot of money and good films make less money. Focus on your experience of the film as an audience and not on the film’s collections. Focus on whether the film was worth the price of your ticket, not on whether the price of the film should go up or down,” he added.

When a ‘Twitter’ user wrote that a film is made to make money, he asked the user, “Do you watch a film to earn money? Then what do you have to do with the business of a film?”

Hansal Mehta is known for directing hard-hitting films like ‘Shahid’, ‘Omerta’ and ‘Aligarh’ and recently saw the release of his film, ‘Faraaz’. The action thriller film is based on the 2016 terrorist attack in a cafe in Dhaka, Bangladesh and marked the debut of Shashi Kapoor’s grandson Zahan Kapoor.