Was Ra One a Hit or Flop?

It’s been 2 years since one of India’s costliest films Ra One released in theatres, but the debate rages on to this day. Was Ra One a Hit or Flop? Don’t think that there has been a single day this question has not been asked by one of our many readers. Today, as the Shahrukh Khan – Kareena Kapoor starrer celebrates its 2nd anniversary, we hope to finally put an end to this debate once and for all.

Let’s start with the economics: The total investment on Ra One including print and advertising was Rs 135 crore. Eros International recovered a huge chunk of that investment when they sold the satellite and music rights of the film for Rs 40 crore. Since portions of the film were shot in United Kingdom, the UK government paid Rs 20 crore as subsidy (some trade analysts have quoted a figure of 25 crore). Home video rights must have fetched around 2 crore. The total non-theatrical revenue was approx Rs 62 crore.

Ra One Hit Or Flop?

Theatrical returns: The Hindi version of Ra One collected around 115 crore in India, regional dubbed versions collected 9 crore and total overseas business amounted to Rs 43 crore. The All-India distributors share including dubbed versions is 68 crore and overseas share is around 17 crore. In total, Eros recovered around 85 crore from theatrical business.

• Total Revenue – Rs 147 crore
• Total Investment – Rs 135 crore
• Total Profit – Rs 12 crore

When a film has actually made a decent profit, why did Shahrukh Khan himself say that it didn’t quite work as well as he expected it to. That is because, as a film Ra One was a complete failure, critics and audience thrashed it.  For a film made on this scale and budget, it was expected to earn much more than it did. Also, a few individual distributors lost money, which isn’t usually the case for most SRK starrers. A few exhibitors who released the film on ‘fixed hire’ screens lost a bit of money. Ra One also under-performed in circuits like C.P and C.I and the distributor lost money. But all these losses put together isn’t big enough to call the film a ‘FLOP’.

In fact, Ra One did reasonably good business, the film’s total worldwide gross is around Rs 225 crore which is a huge figure even for films that release today. Only about 12 films have managed to collect 200 cr or more.

Like Rakesh Roshan’s Krrish 3 which releases next weekend, the risk that Shahrukh Khan took with Ra One was huge. The expectations were high, but the results were disappointing. But the very fact that a rejected film, recovered the investment that went into India’s most expensive film, is an achievement in itself. The film wasn’t a commercial failure, or even an above average grosser. Ra One was a HIT.

Note: SRK recovered a fair bit of money from all the record brand-tie up deals. We haven’t even taken that into consideration here.