Fan dropped on the second day at key centres which basically sealed its fate and the postmortems will happen but the genre of the film always meant an uphill struggle to meet expectations which were mainly there because of a big star like Shahrukh Khan. It could have succeeded but was never going to be a superstar level hit. The highest grossing thriller till date is Holiday - A Soldier Is Never Off Duty at 112 crore nett and that says it all.
The next best are Ek Villain and Race 2 and the list of disappointments in the genre is huge not just over the last few years but since they started being made in Hindi. The last big hit in the genre was Agni Sakshi way back in 1996 and this was mainly driven by Mumbai circuit which had a tax free status.
The last one to do extraordinary business all over was actually a Shahrukh Khan film Darr in 1993. This is probably the most successful thriller genre film in India ever but the reason it went so far was that other elements that are needed in a Hindi film were blended so well in the film especially a love story and music. Also it was directed by the one of the greats of Hindi cinema Yash Chopra and there no directors of that level today in the Hindi film industry.
Basically the bigger the star, the bigger the risk with this genre. The more popular you are then the higher the expectations go which just can't be met with the genre especially the sort of number that is expected of a Shahrukh Khan or a Salman Khan starrer. Its difficult to meet expectations anyway and if a few circuits reject the film then the gap between expectation and final result can look huge which is the case with Fan.
The downside of mega stardom is that you can't really go out of the drama, action and love story genre today as box office numbers are reported everywhere and outside these genres you need some outstanding film to put up a megastar number.
It is also interesting to note that the other superstar of the day Salman Khan has no film in the thriller genre in our database which goes back to 1994. Not only Salman Khan but even the legendary megastars of prior generations with great box office records are likely to have filmographies devoid of thrillers.
