Its a bad time in the industry with nothing outside Khan films putting up the big numbers though budgets have increasing fast over the last few years. The 100 crore cost including marketing which was first crossed by RA.ONE in 2011 is now nothing major. This has resulted in the three biggest box office disasters in the history of Hindi cinema over the last 18 months. The disasters come week in week out as the Hindi film industry churns out on average four films a week but most of these films have no chance anyway as no one really knows about them. The real disasters are films with a spend and then they come a cropper.

The first mega disaster was released on 10 April 2015. Calling this film a mega disaster is being very kind, there has been nothing like this before or possibly will never come again. BROKEN HORSES was a film made for international audiences by a Hindi filmmaker but no one saw the film and actually its best numbers came in India despite being for International audiences. The film was reported to be made at a cost of $16.5million (102 crore, April 2015 rates) by the western press but that seems typical of an Indian filmmaker, giving an exaggerated budget and its probably around 50-60 crore. The recovery for the film from all revenue sources was 75 lakhs. If a film 30 years ago cost 3 crore and recovered 75 lakhs it was a mega disaster, Here its 60 crore and possibly 102 crore if the maker is to be believed. Its hard to give a hit but probably even harder to give a disaster of this proportion. The US/Canada business for whom the film was made for had a lifetime of $31k.

The second mega disaster was released on 15 May 2015. BOMBAY VELVET had a cost of 118 crore and its recovery from all sources was around 29 crore giving it a loss of 89 crore. At the time Ranbir Kapoor was an upcoming star but the total rejection of this film hit him the hardest. It was just unbelievable that a niche film was made at such a high cost. Though with such high cost, the actors and technical team would have benefited in terms of remuneration on the account of the people funding the film.

The third mega disaster was released last month on 12 Aug 2016. MOHENJO DARO cost around 138 crore to produce and release and its recovery from all revenue sources will be around 55 crore giving it a loss of around 83 crore. The film is probably not as big as disaster as the films above but still the losses are huge as the budget was too high for a film which holds little relevance with today's audience. It also has a knock back affect on an established star like Hrithik Roshan and makes the future projects look much weaker than the were pre MOHENJO DARO.

The order for the disasters would be
1. Broken Horses (This will be tough to beat))
2. Bombay Velvet
3. Mohenjo Daro

Note - the prices taken for satellite, digital, music, etc are real value not necessarily prices paid as Mohenjo Daro fetched 45 crore for television and 15 for music giving the studio higher recovery but these losses will be in the books of the buyers of television and music rights..