B’wood’s New Year gamble

Bollywood is ready to lay an all-out assault at the New Year box office, even as filmmakers get ready to banish memories of a dismal 2009. Within the first five weeks of 2010, five big budget ventures will be looking to salvage the industry’s pride and finances.

With Rajkumar Hirani’s 3 Idiots ending the year, we have Salman Khan’s Veer, Karan Johar’s My Name Is Khan, Rakesh Roshan’s Kites and Prakash Jha’s Rajneeti, followed shortly by Mani Ratnam’s Raavan to look forward to. Mega budgets and star casts are the only things uniting these films — with each tackling very different subjects.

Veer is an epic period love story, while My Name is Khan deals with terrorism and a character suffering from Asperger’s syndrome. Kites is a complete commercial venture, Rajneeti a stark political drama, and Raavan, a modern take on the Ramayana.

Trade analyst Vinod Mirani says, “The next year is going to start with a bang. We also have Viveck Vaswani’s Dulha Mil Gaya which had been held up for a long time. Then we have these five big films that are not only big starrers but have about Rs 400 crore riding on them. That’s a lot of money at stake. The year has ended on a promising note with films like Wake Up Sid and APKGK doing well at the box office. So yes, things are certainly looking bright.”