BMCM, one of the most anticipated movies of the year, failed to create any sort of impact at the Box Office. There was a huge hype surrounding BMCM when it was announced in February 2022. Two action heroes coming together for an action flick helmed by Ali Abbas Zafar was certainly something everyone was looking forward to and we were assured of a big ticket entertainer!
After which the inclusion of the Malayalam Superstar Prithviraj Sukumaran further piqued everyone’s interest and everyone wondered what even could go wrong for this film to not work. But, boy did almost everything go wrong with it and here are us at OCD Times decoding the reasons for the failure of BMCM.
Diminishing Goodwill of Akshay & Tiger
At the time of announcement, both the leads of the movie were consistently giving hits. Tiger had delivered high box office collections with Baaghi 3 and War whilst Akshay Kumar was mostly giving good entertainers. However, that certainly wasn’t the case at the time of release of the movie. Tiger had given two disasters back to back and Akshay has been giving a string of flops since Bachchhan Paandey barring OMG 2.
One of the reasons is overexposure of both the stars in too many films, reels, songs, ads and public appearances, with most of them looking like different versions of the same thing. This takes away from the novelty factor of the stars as the audience has too many options to choose from and they will not be excited if they are not presented with something new. Thus, it seems like they have lost their credibility among the audience and they both need to take a completely new and different approach.
Horrible Songs
Songs are one of the most important tool of marketing in today’s times. Neither the audio or the video presented us with something new. We had two action stars and the film promised their camaraderi. A song like the title track of Desi Boyz or Jai Jai Shivshankar from War was needed to excite both fandoms. But instead we got a dull track of Bade Miyan chote Miyan which was far from good, both vocally and visually.
Mast Malang Jhoom felt like a misfit even in the movie and the rest two songs at the end credits were also a waste. Not even a single song from the entire album of the movie managed to create any sort of impact among the audience. You can take the example of Animal, where the songs added exponential hype, especially after the release of the film.
One of the major problems of the music industry today is that they make songs thinking whether they will be viral via reels and memes. They take big popular names and force them to compose chartbusters. Art does not happen like that. Go back a few years and you will realise that earlier the songs were made as per the narrative of the film. Lyrics suited the situation, the lines had poetry in them, and the composers and singers performed in a way which suited the emotion of the characters and the story of the film at the time they were played. Take some time to observe this, you will see the pattern.
The Pooja Entertainment Curse
BMCM was produced by Pooja Entertainment, a production house that does not have a good history regarding the collections, verdict and quality of their films. The last hit from the production house was Biwi No.1 back in 1999. Since then, they haven’t produced a single clean hit at the box office. Coincidentally, the original Bade Miyan Chote Miyan was the hit and is loved even today. Both Akshay and Tiger have worked with Pooja Entertainment in their previous movies and both of them have given disasters.
Neither Teaser nor the Trailer Clicked
Before the release of both – the Trailer as well as the Teaser, there was a lot of hype created surrounding both of them on social media by the trade and PR. It was said to be the next big thing. However, when the general audience saw the assets, they were rather disappointed with its generic approach, and the high expectations set by the trade and PR were not matched creating a severe dent in the buzz of the movie.
Overdose of Action Flicks
In the previous few years there have been several big budget mass action flicks that have released on a trot. However, not all of them were successful. Inspite of this, there was a saturation among the audience regarding action movies and their overdose.
Earlier this year, we also saw Fighter not meeting the expectations of the trade with respect to it’s collections and a very well made action movie like Yodha tanked at the box office. This clearly signifies that the audience are in the mood to rest their minds from action and watch other genres instead.
BMCM Was NOT A Good Film!
Everyone talks about budget, box office collections, stardom and audience pull. What the audience and especially the “experts” fail to understand that all the stardom and audience pull happened because they gave great films one after another. So isn’t that the most important thing we should be talking about?
The film felt like it tried too hard to look like a Hollywood flick with weak characters and weak storyline. Every actor was under-utilised, comedy was forced and action set pieces were not properly designed. Tech terms were being thrown around as if it was the 80’s and 90’s where they thought they could get away with anything – like Mithun blowing up bombs with an 8-bit gameboy or Rajkumar defeating Genda Swamy by removing ‘fuse conductor.’
Bad Marketing
Again, most people will not accept the fact that the movie marketing industry needs to go through a heavy change. Most of the things are done which used to work 10-15 years back, when the world was a different place. The newer things that have started are to do creating a facade by paid reviews, reels, memes and PR. This might make many people angry but the truth is all around us, we just have to observe and accept.
“Real Action Real Action” bol ke ka kya fayda jab action dekhne mein hi accha na lage toh? It was evident that they tried to tap into the fan-war mindset by building a perception that other stars use stuntmen and VFX while here the stars have done everything themselves. Seriously? Was this the best you could come up with?
If the content is good, marketing becomes easy. Still, newer ways are needed to be explored to bring the audience to the theatres, because everyone now has a hundred options to choose from for entertainment and films are no long the only or supreme source of entertainment for people. Nobody wants to spend extra time, effort and money to go to a theatre to get bored. So if they have even an ounce of doubt, they prefer to wait for ott or watch something else, rather than watching a film they are not excited about.
Chote Miyan, ₹1100 Cr confirmed! – Tathastu!
This was truly the last nail in the coffin as the people were already not happy with the assets and the producers claiming such a big collection for BMCM made them a meme material. It was clear that they were tapping into the fan-war mindset yet again, as indirectly they claimed BMCM would be at par with Pathaan, Jawan, Animal, Gadar 2 and RRR, the post-pandemic films which had significant action and garnered huge collections.
They were already promoting “Real Action” and this video, which they would have thought will help them, made the audience lose trust in the film even further.
Despite all of these reasons, there was some hope still left because of it being an event film that is coming on Eid- one of the most important holidays for film releases. But, the poor advance a day prior to it’s release and the spread of negative word of mouth on the day of the release sealed it’s fate on the box office from the first day itself. Currently, the other Eid release- Maidaan which did little to no promotions is earning more than BMCM per day. A potential HGOTY has failed to even cross 100cr nett at the Box Office.
This is the first commercial failure for Ali Abbas Zafar, 3rd consecutive disaster for Tiger Shroff and Akshay Kumar’s string of flops continues further with BMCM. We hope that all of them make a comeback and get back to their ways of delivering hits and entertaining the audience!
Also check out – BMCM Maha-Pralay Quiz
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