You Asked It - Dangal v Bajrangi Bhaijaan-BOI

A. China there is no competition but that is not the Hindi film audience where we can judge the greatness of a Hindi film. The main question is India and you are right it has done more business but when you are judging which is better than then its not the business but footfalls and then the external factors come into play. These are as below

Dangal - Footfalls - 3.71 crore

Bajrangi Bhaijaan - 3.54 crore

Even here Dangal is ahead but now we add the external factors. Bajrangi Bhaijaan released one week after Bahubali - The Beginning which did not start well but when Bajrangi Bhaijaan released this film was on a run and found a big audience and competed with Bajrangi Bhaijaan. Then in the third week there was a major release like Drishyam for competition. Dangal on the other hand had a clean run for three weeks and then the competition came from a film like Ok Jaanu in week four. The way we read it is that if Bahubali - The Beginning and Drishyam were not there then Bajrangi Bhaijaan would have easily covered the 17 lakh footfall shortfall it has with Dangal. Bajrangi Bhaijaan with an open run could have been a 4 crore footfall film. When these sort of comparisons are made its not just about the final count but how it came about and the luck of a cleaner run has to be factored in. If all things were equal for both films then its likely Bajrangi Bhaijaan will have more footfalls unless the belief is that Bahubali - The Beginning and Drishyam did not cost Bajrangi Bhaijaan an audience which common sense says is not possible. This is our calculation, others may differ.

Mahesh Verma