It is time for reckoning again at bollywood as one after another big-banner titles have fallen by the wayside. Director Mani Ratnam’s Raavan, billed to be the comeback performance of the Abhishek Bachchan-Aishwarya Rai pair after their 2007 movie Guru, had a weak opening.

According to trade figures, just Rs 17 crore came in as net box office collections for the three-day, 18-20 June weekend. On the Monday after, the movie tanked even further and industry estimates.

Put its net lifetime collections at just Rs 30 crore. Even though the Tamil version Ravanan has done better than the Bollywood version, it is still a fairly crippling blow for Reliance Big Pictures that shelled out Rs 90 crore for distributing the film worldwide across a record 2,200 screens.

In the following week two movies, Krantiveer 2 and Mr Singh Mrs Mehta, also failed, posting barely 10-15 per cent box office occupancy in their opening weekend. Earlier, Kites that released on 21 May did not fare any better. The film, which has Hrithik Roshan appearing as a Bollywood-dance teacher and serial bridegroom for ‘legitimising’ immigrant ladies in Las Vegas, scored big collections on Day 1. But after that, it sank without a trace with a net collection of barely Rs 30-40 crore in the first seven-10 days. Two weeks before Kites, Yash Chopra’s Badmaash Company opened with 60-65 per cent average occupancy across the country and a net box office collection of just Rs 13 crore.

The only film that bucked the trend was Prakash Jha’s Raajneeti. It got a boost both from the controversy generated in political circles as well as from the parallels drawn between Katrina Kaif and Congress president Sonia Gandhi. Released on 4 June, the film’s opening weekend’s net collections, estimated at around Rs 80 crore, are among the highest in the industry.

After being paralysed for seven weeks (12 March-25 April) of cricket mania during which there were no big releases, the string of flops over the past two months has dealt a heavy blow to the industry. The first half of 2010 is virtually a washout. It is obvious that Bollywood production houses are not able to take their movies beyond the initial marketing blitz. The stories, if at all there are any, are not drawing mass interest and critics have warned that the screenplays for most of these recent films have been at best patchy.

Vijay Singh, CEO of Fox Star Productions, blames the business model in Bollywood which is currently based on expensive acquisition of under-production movies by big groups such as Reliance ADAG’s Big Cinemas or UTV Movies. “Since actors who can draw an audience are in short supply, producers book them without knowing the script,” he says. The only way forward, he believes, is co-production between the acquiring group and initial producers. This can keep a tight leash on script quality, production schedules and performance of actors, he adds.

These issues of ‘corporatisation’ and ‘script-based projects’ have been debated ad nauseam in the film industry, but it is obvious the main industry players are not prepared to put their money where their mouth is. Some like Vijay Singh believe there have been gradual changes for the better but concede that “few follow the steps they talk about”.

According to Sanjay Bhattacharjee, COO of Cinema Capital Venture Fund, the economics in the film industry has become unsustainable. “The industry is entirely dependent on the six-seven key actors, and they name the price, sit back and wait. They have made their money, so they have nothing to lose,” he says. Bhattacharjee, however, concedes in the same breath that the industry is realising that costs had to come down and the various players — actors, technicians, directors — were all willing to trim their demand to ensure the show goes on. Perhaps, with lower costs and stricter quality parameters, Bollywood will see better days in the second half of 2010.