Mumbai: Amid clash with Sidharth Malhotra’s Yodha at the box office, Bastar: The Naxal Story has had a dismal start, given it’s from the team behind The Kerala Story.
The team of Adah Sharma, Sudipto Sen, and Vipul Amrutal Shah pulled off a box office coup last year with the breakout success of their film The Kerala Story. However, if the opening day collection reported is something to go by, their new collaboration Bastar: The Naxal Story, may not see a similar rise.
Bastar has managed to secure only ₹50 lakh on Friday at the domestic box office. This is only a minor fraction of the surprising day one total that her previous film, The Kerala Story, pulled off at the box office last year. That film, also directed by Sudipto and produced by Vipul, earned ₹8 crore on its opening day. It then went on to rise steadily at the box office, culminating in an impressive lifetime total of ₹242 crore in India.
Based on the Naxal insurgency in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar district, the film explores the sufferings of the common people in the region without getting into the political side of the issue. Adah plays the role of an IPS officer in the movie.
After the controversy surrounding The Kerala Story, Vipul clarified earlier this week an event that Bastar: The Naxal Story isn’t political. “We didn’t want to get into politics. We want to explore human tragedy. All politics is on one side and real sufferers are the common people. When will their pain come out in front of people? We usually swear at politicians and leave the issue but this real human tragedy needs to come forward,” he said.
A few weeks ago, Fighter director Siddharth Anand suggested that his magnum opus about aerial combat was coming a cropper probably because a high volume of the Indian cinema-going audience had never been on a flight.
The Sidharth Malhotra-starrer has been performing well at the domestic box office. The action-packed film earned nearly ₹6 crore in India on day two of its release
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