"Audience always believes in good product and story"- Divya Khosla Kumar

18 Feb 2016

The unpredictable ways of the box office struck again when this week the big mammoth purportedly epic love story Fitoor collected a meager Rs. 3.5 crores on the first day of release whereas the relatively smaller-budgeted Sanam Re, collected approximately Rs. 5 crores on Day 1.

There was no sign of improvement in the collections of Fitoor over the weekend. How does one explain a Rs. 14 crore budgeted Sanam Re out-distancing the massive budgeted Fitoor at the box office? Sanam Re director Divya Khosla Kumar doesn't hide her surprise at the turn of events. "I honestly thought Fitoor being a Katrina Kaif film and also considering the director had delivered two successes, would get a better opening. And I was completely fine with that. But Sanam Re scored better than Fitoor ! This just inspires me to work harder. Also audience always believes in good product and story." However, Divya admits she wasn't trying to be one-up on Fitoor . "For me competition is always with my own self. To grow more as a creative person and to provide the audience a story they can connect with." Analyzing reasons for Sanam Re out-performing Fitoor trade pundit Taran Adarsh, "Music plays an integral part in attracting an initial and the music of Sanam Re was more mass-friendly than Fitoor , which helped Sanam Re open better. Also, Sanam Re was aggressively promoted, targeting itself to the youth and the promos were catchy. On the other hand, although superbly promoted, Fitoor promos gave the feeling of catering to a niche audience. That gave Sanam Re an edge." Adds trade analyst Atul Mohan, " Fitoor was not engrossing and invited immediate negative reviews. The music and promotion was very weak. The music of Sanam Re was very popular and the promotion was done aggressively too. A love story without strong music is very unlikely to go down well with viewers. The makers of Sanam Re knew this and worked hard on the music. While