Besharam vs Boss: Box Office Comparison

Post the failure of Besharam, all eyes were on Akshay Kumar’s Boss. The film was expected to fare well as the pre-release hype was good – the music was fairly popular with a few songs topping charts, the action-masala genre was expected to bring in the single screen audiences to theatres and Boss was expected to erase the bad memories of Once Upon Ay Time In Mumbaai Dobaara.

Besharam – Boss

Like Besharam, Boss too released on a Wednesday which also happened to be a national holiday for Bakrid. The film opened well at single-screens but audiences from bigger cities, especially those that prefer to watch films at multiplexes, decided to give the film a skip. The word-of-mouth wasn’t close to as bad as Besharam, in fact those who watched the film liked it, but most multiplexes wore a deserted look even on Saturday.

Is it the pre-Diwali period that has affected business? Are multiplex audience, the so-called classes, tired of being fed with south Indian action-masala remakes almost every other week? Is it because of the failure of OUATIMD or the fact that it was Akshay Kumar’s third release this year?

Coming to the comparisons between Besharam and Boss, the former has managed to collect more, even though the latter (Boss) was watched by more people. The only difference between the two films is the first day business – Besharam benefitted from a much bigger national holiday for Gandhi Jayanti. Remaining days, Boss leads by a slight margin.

Reliance lost more than Rs 20 crore on Besharam. For Viacom, Boss is a profitable film, but individual distributors will end up in the red.

Note: We will update this page for the next 7 days or so. It’ll be interested to see if Boss can eventually beat Besharam and go on to be Akshay’s third 60 crore grosser of the year.