Tiger Shroff – A star born for the smaller towns?

It’s just another Sunday and I find myself sitting at the window sipping my hot cuppa, browsing websites on my phone. What I stumble upon suddenly piques my interest. Keeping my cup aside, I decide to peer further to see if it can satiate my curiosity. ‘Baaghi: A Rebel for Love‘ has had the second highest opening of the year!

The film opened well, it was one of the better openings in the morning, at par with Akshay Kumar’s ‘Airlift’ that had picked up only by afternoon. Given the fact that this film belonged to the action genre – one that doesn’t find a huge loyal audience in India, it was neither a big budget movie nor had an established superstar, and wasn’t even backed by superhit music; the figures were startling.

So what could have worked in the film’s favour? With an average critic rating of about 2.5 stars, I couldn’t find an answer to the question. Word of mouth suggested that Tiger Shroff has been phenomenal in his deliverance, besides South star Sudheer Babu who had an exceptional Bollywood debut with his villainous role in the film. I peered further into the collections, and the findings were even more surprising.

By evening of the day of release, ‘Baaghi’ was boasting of double digit collections, roaring to beat opening numbers of ‘Airlift’ in smaller circuits like CP, Berar, CI, Rajasthan, Orissa, Assam, West Bengal and Saurashtra. By now, it had become the second highest opener of 2016, just next to Shah Rukh Khan’s ‘Fan’. In Bihar, the film even beat ‘Fan’ to have the highest first day of the year!

Now it has to be noted that action films this year, like ‘Rocky Handsome’ and ‘Ghayal Once Again’, had suffered badly at multiplexes. Even so, ‘Baaghi’ falling in the same genre, did an average business at multiplexes.

Towards the end of first day, Tiger’s ‘Baaghi’ was roaring at over Rs 11.75 crore nett. In all the mass circuits, except Rajasthan, the figure of ‘Baaghi’ beat that of ‘Fan’ – all this without a star power. There could be something about this new budding star Tiger Shroff that drew the audience to the movieplexes.

There have been other successful films this year, like ‘Neerja’ and ‘Kapoor & Sons’, but none opened to such good numbers, though they picked later. By now ‘Baaghi’ was already making noises to be emerging as a HIT. Just then, the second day collections too registered a double digit figure, over Rs 10 crore nett. The drop was around 12%, but that was not something the film couldn’t afford.

A total of Rs 22.50 crore in two days, all achieved by a not-so-big budget movie. The film supposedly draws inspiration from an Indonesian and a Telugu film. It’s not original, it’s said to be a cliche and too predictable. The script is said to be a rebel too. It certainly has to be the actors that are drawing the masses to the screens. We have seen enough of Shraddha. But this one is Tiger’s only second film after ‘Heropanti’. It won’t be wrong to say that Tiger has hit the right chord with the mass audience. He has a good fan base in the smaller towns too and is, in all possibility, a new star in the industry.