Dilwale is doing very good business. Shah Rukh Khan's newest endeavor isn't disappointing, but the obscene piles of money are not flowing in like analysts expected. According to the web site the Daily O, "While Salman Khan's Prem Ratan Dhan Payo made Rs 40 odd crore on the opening day, Dilwale registered barely half of that at Rs 21 crore. The collections dropped on Saturday, but on Monday, Bajirao Mastani overtook Dilwale!"
Why, you ask? Some time back, SRK spoke out about intolerance in India. It caused a minor controversy, Twitter picked it up and ran with it before getting distracted by a new shiny object, something which happens about every two and a half minutes. SRK drew large circles with his criticisms and was rather generic in his critique. Fast forward a little bit and Aamir Khan takes up the intolerance cause but in a more hard stance: "Actor, Aamir Khan, on Monday joined the debate over "rising intolerance" in India, saying his wife, Kiran Rao, had asked if they should move out of the country, as she feared for the safety of their children in a climate of insecurity."
Only this time, the controversy that followed was greater and louder and SRK was swept up in it. For that matter, all of liberal Bollywood was as well. Embargo Aamir's next film is the usual answer, but Aamir doesn't have one until next year so it fell in SRK's lap. Thus, the lukewarm financial return for Dilwale. An organized campaign, from the same Daily O article "Celebrities called this boycott a new form of intolerance, but whether we like it or not, it is here to stay. Twitter virtually elected the last prime minister of India and it has now started denting commercial fortunes of celebrities. That sounds quite dangerous. But there's not much we can do about it."
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