The year is coming to an end and in one way it can be said to be record breaking but its record breaking in the way no one would like to see. Last year (2015) was the first time in its 100 year plus history that there was over 200 Hindi films released in the calendar year. This year it has gone better as not only has the 200 film release mark been surpassed but another record has been set with more than 200 FLOP films. The tally so far for 2016 is 218 Hindi films with three weeks to go and the flop count is 203. Only fifteen Hindi films have done AVERAGE business or better. It is no doubt going to be the first year ever as far as successful films are concerned.

If we go back twenty five years to 1991 there were 144 Hindi releases and 28 films did average or better business. That is close to 20% success ratio compared to 7% this year. If we go back another 25 years the ratio gets even better. Not only are the successes minimal but there is only one Hindi grosser (Sultan) also, it would not be so bad if the ratio is so low but there are 4 or 5 films which were grossers but that is not the case.

It is true that out of the 218 films its only 50 at best that have some sort of awareness therefore some chance at the box office but people still seem to be taking a chance when in this era there is little hope for those 150 plus films to find an audience. There has to be bottom somewhere down the line as can it get worse than a 7% success ratio when it was over 50% in the 70's. This is also happening when the releases look better on paper year after year. 2016 was looking better than 2015 and now 2017 does looks better than 2016 but hopefully the ratio will not be 7% this time next year.