The recent release of Detective Byomkesh Bakshy! inspired me to take a look at the US box office history for all of the Yash Raj Films releases from the past decade. I based my analysis on data provided by Box Office Mojo and Bollywood Hungama (which in turn uses information from Rentrak).
Looking at the total grosses of all films, it looks like there’s a slight trend upward in total box office, over time. (The orange line represents a simple linear regression of all data.)
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You might notice that one film did disproportionately well in late 2013. That’s Dhoom 3, which raked in about $8M. Remove this outlier from the equation, and the other YRF releases are actually on a gentle decline in total box office take.
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Despite the stagnancy of total box office dollars, YRF’s widest releases are being shown in more US theaters than ever.
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A flat box office and more theaters means that opening weekend averages per screen are also trending downward, even when including Dhoom 3 in the calculations. Blockbusters have been immune to the trend, but the underperformers are doing worse than ever. The last four Yash Raj movies released in 2014 (Bewakoofiyaan, Mardaani, Daawat-e-Ishq, and Kill Dil) each came in at under $2,000 per screen.
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Taking into account that average ticket prices have also climbed almost $2 (from $6.41 in 2005 to $8.17 in 2014, according to Box Office Mojo), this lack of growth in box office also means that fewer tickets are being sold for each Yash Raj Films release, on average.
The good news for YRF is that Detective Byomkesh Bakshy! bucked recent trends, averaging about $4,000 per screen in US theaters in its opening weekend. That puts it on par with films from the studio’s most reliable period, 2007-08.
For the remainder of 2015, Yash Raj Films has only one film officially planned for release: Fan, starring Shahrukh Khan. Yet Fan‘s release date has been changed multiple times, and it’s not currently listed on Bollywood Hungama’s release calendar. The surprise success of the romantic comedy Dum Laga Ke Haisha in India prompted Yash Raj Films to create an international trailer for the movie, renaming it My Big Fat Bride. There’s a chance that it could open in US while Fan is completed — though its star, Ayushmann Khurrana, isn’t a guaranteed money maker like Shahrukh Khan.
Even if Yash Raj Films doesn’t release another movie in 2015, Detective Byomkesh Bakshy! has nudged the studio’s fortunes in the US back in the right direction.
Author’s note: My thanks to Box Office Mojo, Bollywood Hungama, and Rentrak for the raw information. Note: there’s no reliable box office data for a pair of 2010 releases — Badmaash Company and Pyaar Impossible — so I couldn’t take them into account in this analysis.
The charts were generated by my husband, Greg Gibson, using the d3.js JavaScript library. Visit his GitHub site to view more YRF charts or to peruse the project’s source code.
Finally, here’s a table of estimated box office data for all YRF releases since 2005:
Title
Total Gross
Max Screens
Opening AVG
Release Date
Bunty Aur Babli
942756
51
8544
Fri May 27 2005
Salaam Namaste
1413283
63
8014
Fri Sep 09 2005
Neal ‘n’ Nikki
111551
44
1705
Fri Dec 09 2005
Fanaa
2105352
72
10459
Fri May 26 2006
Dhoom 2
2643586
63
15540
Fri Nov 24 2006
Kabul Express
302458
50
2852
Fri Dec 15 2006
Ta Ra Rum Pum
872643
85
5001
Fri Apr 27 2007
Jhoom Barabar Jhoom
695157
83
5485
Fri Jun 15 2007
Chak De India
1120404
62
5676
Fri Aug 10 2007
Laaga Chunari Mein Daag
675102
60
5350
Fri Oct 12 2007
Aaja Nachle
484108
66
3902
Fri Nov 30 2007
Tashan
457380
75
4016
Fri Apr 25 2008
Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic
365401
68
2671
Fri Jun 27 2008
Bachna Ae Haseeno
702166
71
4541
Fri Aug 15 2008
Roadside Romeo
55202
29
1440
Fri Oct 24 2008
Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi
2078956
83
11096
Fri Dec 12 2008
New York
997437
60
7795
Fri Jun 26 2009
Dil Bole Hadippa!
644046
54
6508
Fri Sep 18 2009
Rocket Singh
164649
70
2352
Fri Dec 11 2009
Band Baaja Baaraat
71374
32
1369
Fri Dec 10 2010
Mere Brother Ki Dulhan
496172
74
5448
Fri Sep 09 2011
Ladies vs. Ricky Bahl
222019
80
2775
Fri Dec 09 2011
Ek Tha Tiger
2347774
120
9495
Wed Aug 15 2012
Jab Tak Hai Jaan
3047539
164
7973
Tue Nov 13 2012
Aurangzeb
149000
62
1468
Fri May 17 2013
Shuddh Desi Romance
641000
116
2980
Fri Sep 06 2013
Dhoom 3
8090250
239
14320
Fri Dec 20 2013
Gunday
887675
150
3656
Fri Feb 14 2014
Bewakoofiyaan
106800
66
1026
Fri Mar 14 2014
Mardaani
393619
86
1965
Fri Aug 22 2014
Daawat-e-Ishq
385415
113
1814
Fri Sep 19 2014
Kill Dil
246107
87
1977
Fri Nov 14 2014