Zara Hatke Zara Bachke had a poor start at the box office but will be boosted by a buy one get one free ticket offer which pushed the advance of the film yesterday. This should make the first day look decent but where do you go from there. It looked like the industry had understood that lower ticket rates and incentives cannot improve box office prospects but it looks like we are not quite there yet.

If a film is accepted then these things can a help to improve the footfalls though box office remains pretty much the same as all that is done is higher footfalls are achieved on a lower rate. But when a film is accepted then it gets more people to watch the film. Having offers and incentives on release basically means heading for trouble.

Maybe with this film the makers really did not have much of a choice as both the male and female leads (Vicky Kaushal and Sara Ali Khan) have had releases which have gone straight to television over the last few years so the audiences which is being targeted by Zara Hatke Zara Bachke has been watching these artists for free so why would they pay to watch them in the theatres so free tickets are give here also. There may well be an audience looking for this film on the streaming channels on release date.

This is a huge issue as artists kill there theatrical value by coming on television for free. Next week there will be Shahid Kapoor with a televison film and from the trailer Bloody Daddy looks horrible but even if it looked good you are still killing whatever equity you have and then need to give something special to get it back. Its easy to take when the content is bad so you put the opening down to that but it will eventually hurt actors when they have something good and it fails to start as they have killed equity by becoming television actors from theatrical actors.

At the end of the day it is content which has to drive the box office and not offers and incentives and in the long run these films have suffered and it remains to be seen if Zara Hatke Zara Bachke proves any different. A huge issue is that this has ben done before and it has not worked so why repeat.