Box Office Winners And Losers Of The Year 2016!

Rachit Gupta lists the winners and losers of the year 2016. A box-office round-up…

- Rachit Gupta

This year witnessed a see-saw of fortunes. Salman Khan continued to be the box-office Midas with Yash Raj Films’ Sultan shattering records. Shah Rukh Khan’s films Fan and Dear Zindagi received rave reviews. While big numbers eluded the first, the latter surely gathered more volume. Akshay Kumar enjoyed one of his career’s best runs with three ₹100 crore hits. There were also massive disappointments like Hrithik Roshan’s Mohenjo Daro and Katrina Kaif’s Fitoor. But the festival flurry salvaged the industry. The Diwali and Eid releases (and the impending Christmas bonanzas) brought in the big bucks. But in the wake of the fact that Hollywood’s The Jungle Book managed ₹183 crore and the Marathi blockbuster Sairat had a ₹75 crore box-office tally, the pressure on B-town’s big-budget movies just got bigger. A low-down of the cash register of 2016...

Small is big

With almost half the year gone by, B-town had just one ₹100-crore plus hit – Akshay Kumar’s Airlift. It was critically acclaimed and commercially celebrated. The Raja Krishna Menon directorial enjoyed a 10-week run at the box-office. This gritty tale, inspired by the heroics of Indian citizens in Kuwait back in the ’90s, made a whopping ₹127 crore. The next big film was Shah Rukh Khan’s