Diwali is the festival of light. It comes with the most awaited annual bonuses, and with some extra cash in their pockets, many find their way to the movies.
Diwali has traditionally been one of the year's biggest box office periods in India. That is the time big budget movies set to release on this occasion.
Rewind to 2007 when you had one of the most exciting box-office face-offs in Hindi film history. Farah Khan’s
Om Shanti Om, which had both Shah Rukh Khan and the debutante Deepika Padukone in double roles and a galaxy of other stars in guest appearances, was pitted against Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s
Saawariya which was the debut film of Ranbir Kapoor and Sonam Kapoor.
Further back, 2000 saw the epic clash between Aditya Chopra’s
Mohabbatein and Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s
Mission Kashmir. The latter rode the wave of hysteria surrounding a new superstar, Hrithik Roshan. And then came
Mohabbatein with Shah Rukh Khan and Amitabh Bachchan, together for the first time, presenting a teacher-principal rivalry.
In the past few years, however, the most intense rivalries at the box office have taken place on other dates. On the Republic Day weekend this year, Shah Rukh Khan and Hrithik Roshan faced each other after a 17-year gap, with Raees and Kaabil. Bhansali got his revenge when
Bajirao Mastani, starring Ranveer Singh, Deepika Padukone and Priyanka Chopra, beat
Dilwale, starring Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol, in the week leading up to Christmas in 2015.
Stars have chosen separate occasions to release their movies so that they can avoid the clash of Box Office. Now movies get release on Eid, Christmas, Republic Day and Independence Day. Salman Khan has made an event out of every Eid for his fans, coming out with at least one film every year.
“Eid has definitely become the No.1 slot, overtaking Diwali,” says Brijesh Tandon, a film distributor who operates primarily in the Delhi-Uttar Pradesh circuit. “It has happened ever since Salman’s
Dabangg came out in 2010.”
Since 2007, six of the seven films with Aamir Khan in the lead (other than
Talaash in 2012) have been released during the Christmas week:
Taare Zameen Par (2007),
Ghajini (2008),
3 Idiots (2009),
Dhoom: 3 (2013),
PK (2014) and
Dangal (2016). The last two are the third- and second-highest-grossing Indian films of all time, respectively.
Most films of Akshay Kumar, the purveyor of patriotism lite—
Baby (2015),
Airlift (2016),
Rustom (2016),
Toilet: Ek Prem Katha (2017)—over the past few years, were released on Republic Day or Independence Day. Kumar’s next film,
2.0, in which he plays the villain opposite Rajinikanth, is scheduled for a 25 January release.
This time there are two Diwali releases- Aamir Khan's
Secret Superstar and Ajay Devgn's
Golmaal Again. Kajol and Karan Johar’s friendship ended prior to the release of Karan and Ajay’s films Ae Dil Hai Mushkil and Shivaay respectively. Karan and Kajol had been friends for 25 years before that. So Bollywood is expecting another cold war between stars in this Diwali.