Why was Refugee a flop?

I liked the film. The only film where I liked Kareena. She played a Bihari Muslim trapped in Bangladesh with family who wanted to migrate to Pakistan from Bangladesh crossing Indian border.

This film was beautifully made but was a flop. Why?

Cuz Abhishek just couldn't pull it off...

Maybe because of high budget?

Adjusted for inflation the movie's box office collection is 115 Crores with "Average" verdict according to BOI.

Refugee also faded in background because of the Blockbuster success of KNPH when it released back then.

Maybe because it wasn't offered to Aishwarya first...

BOI (FWIW) has it as "Average" and #6 for the year.

https://www.boxofficeindia.com/years.php?year=2000&pageId=6

In terms of footfalls AB has only had 4 films better it. Higher than the first Dhoom or BAB which were hits. Even Kareena has only had 8 better. Almost twice as many people saw it in theaters than JWM.

In Indian B.O. what mostly determines a flop or a hit isn't how many people saw a film, how much a film made, or even how much profit producers made but if distributors made a profit.

For the Kapoor and Bachchan joint debut expectations were sky high. So along with a relatively high budget the distributors fees were also high. It justified those fees on OD where it broke the record (and it opened to 3x more than KHNP which had less than half the screens and a couple months later Mission Kashmir broke the record). It just didn't run well enough.

IDK how it fared at the BO, but I just couldn't tolerate Kareena's OTT expressions and Abhishek's deadpan expressions in the songs 🤔

You know why

I agree with you that it was a beautifully made film and deserved to do better business. However, as someone mentioned above it was not a flop and did average business.

Because the movie wasn't entertaining enough.

Abhishek being compared with HR was another one.

And mind you, Refugee also had a huge hype, it was the biggest opening day of all time, it wasn't like people didn't wanted to watch Abhishek. But movie as a whole lacked that punch which was required during those times.

As most mentioned it was not a flop and had the biggest opening day of all time which is huge for two newcomers.

It might have not done as much as many had expected but it still did twice as much as aishwaryas´s debut film.😆