Newcomers Command In The First Half Of 2014 In Bollywood

With the first half of 2014 over, Raaga.Com analysis, the hits and misses of Bollywood movies released from January till June 2014. The good news is that this year has seen the revival of small budgets movies doing excellent business at box office. Thus reviving alive the era of 70’s when the so-called parallel cinema had made its dint thanks to ‘Thinking Filmmakers’ like Shyam Benegal, Girish Karnad, Govind Nihalani etc. 

This years’ surprise package has been Hansal Mehta’s CITYLIGHTS featuring Rajkummar Rao and Patraleka in lead roles. Other movies that were different from the league and won appreciation include Mrityunjay Devvrat's 'CHILDREN OF WAR' that threw light on the terrifying time in 1971's Bangladesh. Besides Ashim Ahluwalia's MISS LOVELY and Feroz Abbas Khan, DEKH TAMASHA DEKH too proved that there is hope for ‘Thinking Cinema.’

The other highlight of the first half is that the regime that superstars Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan, Aamir Khan, Akshay Kumar and Hrithik Roshan who held sway over box office till now has been broken by the upcoming breed of newcomers like Ranveer Singh, Alia Bhatt, Sidharth Malhotra and Arjun Kapoor. A pointer to this is that despite Alia Bhatt and Arjun Kapoor being comparatively new in the industry, their film, 2 STATES, has crossed the Rs 100 crore mark. Likewise GUNDEY Starring Arjun Kapoor, Ranveer Singh and Priyanka Chopra crossed Rs 100 Crore. 

And what’s more Kangna Ranaut-starrer QUEEN broke all box office records of five year by amassing around Rs 60 crore! In addition the fantastic collections of RAGINI MMS2 proved the notion wrong that women oriented movie do not do well at the box office. 

The years other hits too had new comers winning the race for example HIGHWAY featured Alia Bhatt and Randeep Hooda, HEROPANTI saw junior Jackie Shroff making debut (Tiger Shroff) opposite Kriti Sanon. Likewise Divya Kumar’s YAARIYAN proved hit despite a group of youngsters. 

According to Prabhat Choudhary of Spice, a marketing communication agency the stage is set for newcomers to conquer. He said, “GUNDAY, 2 States, and Heropanti show a definitive change in the way young names are now perceived. There has been considerable excitement around the new brigade for a while now but in the last six months, they have started showing their box office viability.’’