By R. Paul Dhillon
Punjabi singer-actor Gippy Grewal’s latest film Maujan Hi Maujan flopped badly at the box office despite heavy marketing spend which included trotting out Bollywood stars Salman Khan and Sanjay Dutt to promote the film.
Grewal, the busiest man in Punjabi Showbiz, who announces new movies every week, didn’t get the same love at the box office with his latest mindless comedy Maujan Hi Maujan even though he brought in Salman Khan and Sanjay Dutt (who’s starring in his upcoming film Sheran Di Kaim Punjabi) to try to imitate the success of Carry On Jatts 3 which was inaugurated by the great Aamir Khan.
But that marketing gimmick worked for the more commercial COJ3 but can’t work for every hare-brained low level Punjabi comedy as Grewal and his team found out the hard way.
The first 5 days numbers show that given the crores Grewal and his partner Amardeep Grewal might have spent on marketing to try to copy the success of Carry On Jatta 3, the new film is a big dud!
COJ 3 didn’t make it to 100 crore as it was claimed as I wrote in an earlier story that it made a jaw-dropping 91 crore, the highest for any Punjabi movie in history but not the 100 crore bragging rights.
Of course not every movie is going to work and already this month there have been more than half dozen disasters and flops for the Punjabi film industry and more to come as there is still one weekend left.
Theatrical film business is tough gig and without back-end financial support – only the big fish will continue to swim!
