Kangana isn’t the queen she claims to be

BOLLYWOOD BOX OFFICE FIGURES SHOW BOASTFUL STAR RANAUT IS ALL BLUSTER

by ASJAD NAZIR

INDIAN actress Kangana Ranaut has spent a lot of 2020 spreading hate and falsely claiming that she is the queen of Bollywood.

Dissecting all the hatred she, along with her sister Rangoli Chandel, has spread throughout lockdown would take too long and quite frankly be really depressing. Also, a lot of people, including high-profile celebrities such as Diljit Dosanjh and many social media users, have called out Kangana on her abhorrent hate-filled behaviour.

However, it is relatively easy to show her repeated claim of being Hindi cinema’s number one leading lady as being utterly false, with cold hard facts. It all starts with understanding a movie needs to do around three times the budget to go into profit because money has to go towards marketing, distribution costs and cinema share.

Taking all that into account and looking at her last 10 movie releases, Kangana is far from the cinema queen she claims to be. Revolver Rani (2014), Ungli (2015), I Love NY (2015), Katti Batti (2015), Rangoon (2017) and Simran (2017) were huge box office disasters.

Manikarnika: The Queen of Jhansi (2019) generated decent numbers at the box office, but it is considered a huge disaster because of its sky-high production cost. Katti Batti was such a huge failure that it ended the promising career of leading man Imran Khan, who has not been seen in a film since then. Judgementall Hai Kya (2019) and Panga (2020) were moderate successes, but they are considered flops when all the calculations are done. So, the actress has only had one hit film from her last 10 releases and that was 2015 comedy sequel Tanu Weds Manu Returns, which was well over five years ago.

Meanwhile, current Bollywood queen Deepika Padukone’s Hindi film Padmaavat (2018) alone has done more business than Kangana’s last 10 movies combined. Her Hollywood debut XXX: Return of Xander Cage (2017) has done higher numbers than all of the films in Kangana’s career combined, by a long way. Deepika’s other big hits in the past five years are the multi-awardwinning blockbusters Piku (2015) and Bajirao Mastani (2015). Self-proclaimed queen Kangana isn’t even a close second when you look at hard facts.

In the last five years, a number of Bollywood leading ladies have had bigger successes, including Taapsee Pannu, who starred in 2020’s best Bollywood film Thappad and is someone Kangana has made disparaging remarks about. Taapsee has had other big hits in the past five years, including Pink (2016) and Mission Mangal (2019).

Bhumi Pednekar started her career in 2015 with blockbuster hit Dum Laga Ke Haisha and has massively outperformed Kangana at the box office since then. Nushrat Bharucha has starred in super hits Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety (2018) and Dream Girl (2019). Shraddha Kapoor has huge successes to her name like Stree (2018) and Chhichhore (2019).

Even struggling actress Parineeti Chopra scored big with Golmaal Again (2017), which did more business than any film Kangana has acted in and there is a similar story with Vaani Kapoor, who appeared in War, which was the biggest Bollywood movie of 2019.

Katrina Kaif’s film Tiger Zinda Hai (2017) was a bigger hit than anything Kangana has had in her career. Yami Gautam starred in 2019 blockbusters Bala and Uri: The Surgical Strike, which are bigger than anything Kangana had released in the last five years.

Meanwhile, Kareena Kapoor Khan, who has dramatically cut down on films she does, has also had way more box office joy in the past five years, including sleeper super hit Good Newzz (2019). Crown princess of Bollywood Alia Bhatt is also way ahead in terms of box office numbers, awards and critical acclaim. Priyanka Chopra is currently the most famous Indian celebrity in the world. Anushka Sharma has a thriving production house and is one half of India’s most powerful celebrity couple.

So, although Kangana Ranaut may keep calling herself the queen, facts matter and they clearly tell us that most frontline female stars in Indian cinema are way ahead of her in terms of actual box office success. While she continues to shout loudly about her greatness, others are working hard and seeing actual accomplishments. None of them are spreading hate while doing so.