Akshay Kumar’s ‘Selfiee’ Records Slow Start

Indian star Akshay Kumar continued his dry run at the box office as his latest film, Selfiee took a slow start on Friday and earned mere $0.307 million on the first day of the release in the country. The collections are way below trade expectations – most experts had expressed hopes that the film may open anything between $0.5 million and $0.84 million in India and the Selfiee could even touch the lower level of the expected range.

Directed by Raj Mehta, Selfiee is an official Hindi remake of the 2019 Malayalam film Driving License. Kumar steps into the shows of Prithviraj Sukumaran from the original while Emraan Hashmi essays the role originally played by Suraj Venjaramoodu. Kumar essays the role of a huge film star while Hashmi is one of his biggest fan who happens to be the officer who needs to oversee the procedure for the star to secure a driver’s license.

The film features Nushrratt Bharuccha as the traffic officer’s wife and Diana Penty plays the star wife. It was made on an estimated budget of $18.11 million and had a limited (for a Kumar film) release across 1200 screens in India.

While the original film was no masterpiece, the Hindi one has managed to make to worse. The Malayalam movie managed to establish a context for the fan, as well the star’s persona – something that the Hindi completely forgot to do.

Selfiee is the second film in recent times that is a remake of a south-Indian film and has failed to attract audiences. The previous one was Kartik Aaryan’s Shehzada that hit theatres last week and has proved to be a box office dud. Producer and film business expert Girish Johar says, “Remake cannot be a factor for the audience to buy a ticket. You fan buy a ticket if you like the trailer, or love the stars. A remake does not decide that audience will buy tickets. If the remake is done well and has a good PR and all that, it can further solidify your decision, but it is not the only factor that helps you decide.”

He adds, “Story-telling is so vast, a good remake will still work. For example Drishyam 2 worked really well, and traction for Bholaa is also pretty good. If it is not a good film, the audience will come and watch it, whether or not it is a remake. Blindly copying does not work because now similar content is available, audiences do not prefer it. But, I feel critical factors are actors, director and the trailer. If these work, audiences will buy the tickets.”

Talking about the limited release, trade analyst Atul Mohan says that the film does not have a typical “Akshay Kumar kind of wide release” – Selfiee releases only across 1200 screens while a Kumar film typically gets at least 2000-3000 screens. He adds that the producers slashed down the ticket prices nominally in India for the opening day, perhaps hoping to gauze interest before they raise it back to normal.

After kickstarting to get the cash registers ringing at the ticket windows post-pandemic (with Rohit Shetty’s Sooryavanshi in 2021), all the theatrical releases of Kumar have had a disappointing show at the box office in 2022. The social drama Raksha Bandhan opened with $1.08 million while the historical drama Samrat Prithviraj earned $1.20 million on day one in India. Selfiee has registered opening figures lower than both those films.