Entertainment

Mumbai: How Bollywood Manipulates Box Office Figures Through Corporate Bookings And Self-Purchases

Instead of mounting cost-controlled good films, this practice involves rigging the box office with perception control or what netizens call it as corporate bookings.

Sentinel Digital Desk

MUMBAI: Ever wondered what could be the best form of self-love ? Hindi actors and filmmakers would know better as they might sheepishly tell you: Buying your own movie tickets.

The first six months in Bollywood have been dry and cold with no blockbusters in sight and star-studded movies not living up to its expectations.

But that has not stopped producers from pumping money in what has clearly been dubbed as a reckless and harmful practice by the trade.

Instead of mounting cost-controlled good films, this practice involves rigging the box office with perception control or what netizens call it as corporate bookings.

The Hindi film industry witnessed a resurgence from the post-COVID dull phase last year as 2023 turned out to be a good year. New records were made and then broken as the year saw blockbusters like Shah Rukh Khan’s Pathaan and Jawan, Sunny Deol-led Gadar 2 and the Ranbir Kapoor starrer Animal, directed by Sandeep Reddy Vanga.

Discussions around box office figures became the new talk of the town as industry insiders began to chatter about how certain movies in 2023 resorted to corporate bookings and self-purchases to create a perception and inflate their earnings.

This phenomena gave birth to the industry term “organic collections,” which gained prominence in online trade discussions last year.

Several industry insiders have begun to unravel the issue of self-booking, a practice where producers purchase tickets for their own films out of their own funds to inflate box office numbers, thereby misleading audiences by creating a buzz about the films popularity.

This practice gained traction in the aftermath of the pandemic, reached its peak last year, but has now being put under the scanner by trade observers.

They suggest that the film producers are inadvertently leaving clear traces of their actions behind out of sheer desperation.

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