Salman Khan's films are important for Bollywood because they means unprecedented income. He is one of the many reasons the industry can still call it cash-rich. Sultan made insane amounts of money last Eid and thus there were monumental expectations from Tubelight. But unfortunately the film failed to lived up to it. After scoring slightly over Rs 21 crore on its first day, it became clear that it won't follow Salman's other Eid blockbusters. In three days, it has managed to earn only Rs 64.77 crore, which means it couldn't even beat the opening weekend collections of Raees and Kaabil which had released together. However, it did leave behind Akshay Kumar, whose Jolly LLB 2 had made Rs 50.46 crore in first three days. Tubelight also managed to earn more than Badrinath Ki Dulhania (Rs 43.05 crore).
Yes, it is slightly difficult to believe that two films, which clashed at the box office, earned more than Tubelight - a solo release, on the opening weekend. Raees earned Rs 93.24 crore while Kaabil had made Rs 67.46 crore on their opening weekend. Both the films shared screens in January and managed to make good money despite both eating into each other's business. On the contrary, Tubelight had 5500 screens to itself and yet couldn't collect much, which might be slightly alarming. After Baahubali 2, this Salman Khan film was expected to end the dry spell at the box office but guess that won't be possible unless Eid today works a miracle. (Also read: Salman Khan's Tubelight flickers at the box office, will Eid switch its fortunes?)
With the way things are going, we don't see Tubelight earning anything more than Rs 200 crore in its lifetime run, which is pretty disappointing as it was expected to earn more Rs 300 crore. Now is the time to mull over what went wrong with the film. Salman Khan's fans, who made blockbusters out of literally anything Bhai worked in, have clearly slammed the film themselves. What do you think went wrong with Tubelight?
