Rewind - Ghayal The Phenomena Of The Nineties

Thursday 04 February 2016 12.00 IST

Box Office India Trade Network

This week will see the release of Ghayal Once Again which is a sequel of 1990 Ghayal which was a box office phenomena in the ninties. The film was was not the biggest grosser of the nineties as films like Hum Aapke Hain Kaun, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, Raja Hindustani and Border recorded much higher numbers as the box office went to another level in the second half of the nineties.

Ghayal set records in repeat runs. No film from the nineties was even close to it in repeat runs and only Sholay has higher business in repeat runs in the history of Hindi cinema. Ghayal was released on 22nd June 1990 and was a huge hit but after six months its billings in all circuits barring CP Berar, Nizam / Andhra and Mysore were 25-30% behind Dil which was a blockbuster released on the same day as Ghayal.

The Ghayal story did not finish in 1990 and went on and on. The film had its first repeat run in Mumbai on 27th September 1991 and the response was earth shattering as despite being one year old the film was competing with new blockbuster films. Below are the first two week figures in Mumbai of Ghayal in this repeat run compared with the first two weeks of 1992 blockbuster Beta on release.

Week One

Ghayal (Repeat Run) - 11,37,706 from 11 cinemas (99.07%)

Beta - 15,91,205 from 18 cinemas (98.24%)

Week Two

Ghayal (Repeat Run) - 13,52,924 from 16 cinemas (83.14%)

Beta - 13,41,736 from 16 cinemas (97.47%)

This repeat run eventually went to 80 lakhs nett which was a record for any one single repeat run in any circuit. The 80 lakhs nett figure in Mumbai at the time was a figure that only a dozen odd films in 1991 would do in its lifetime run but this film did in repeat run when first run alone had hit 2 crore nett.

Ghayal contiuned to have more repeat runs as the Sunny Deol action image consolidated through the nineties and eventually went to 3.25 crore nett plus in Mumbai which was an extraordinary total. Basically in terms of inflation adjusted figures Ghayal was probably a 275-300 crore nett grosser.

If Ghayal sequel had come in the 90's or even early 2000's it would have smashed all opening records due to the huge appreciation of the earlier film but Ghayal Once Again is coming more than 25 years later and the audience that made Ghayal such a huge blockbuster is not the theatre going audience today which probably means the film depending on its content rather than the brand value of the earlier film.