DASHAVATAR - Kamal Hassan's fourth flop in a row

By Joginder Tuteja, Bollywood is certainly not smiling on Kamal Hassan. With the release and failure of DASHAVATAR, the actor has now suffered his fourth straight flop in a row when it comes to his stint up North.

Even though his most ambitious venture was a success when released in Tamil last year, the dubbed Hindi version has flopped miserably.

Ever since the release of CHACHI 420 (1997), Kamal Hassan has only seen outright rejection when it comes to enticing audiences in the Hindi belt. This is something visible in the fate of all the films that have released ever since CHACHI 420. HEY! RAM (2000) flopped in spite of Shah Rukh Khan and Rani Mukherjee in the film's cast. ABHAY (2001) was rejected on it's very first day of it's release even with Manisha Koirala and Raveena Tandon in the lead. MUMBAI EXPRESS (2005) which again featured Manisha Koirala as the leading lady derailed even though it was a genuinely funny movie. And now DASHAVATAR, which is the Hindi dubbed version of the namesake Tamil film, has not found any takers in spite of zero competition from any other film.

The film saw a select multiplex release but arrived sans any fanfare. The promotion was patchy and audiences were hardly aware about it's release. As a result, the film could gather only around 1 crore in it's first week with poor collections all over. While Mumbai was the best with around 25 lakhs coming in, Delhi could barely come close to the 10 lakhs mark.

The other release of the week, MERI PADOSAN, has expectedly turned out to be yet another major box office disaster this year. A non-starter, this zero star-cast film has laid a turkey at the box office and folded up at less than 25 lakhs.

The only consolation in weeks to follow? Since there have been no releases in the weekend gone by, at least there won't be any more disasters to be added to the long pile that Bollywood has suffered in 2009.