Ra.One final verdict - HIT or FLOP?

"A film is a box office hit if it recovers all its investment through its theatrical nett collections and additionally makes good amount of profits. If it does not make high profits but at least recovers its investment, it is termed average. If it cannot even recover its investment, it is labelled a flop."

So let us go to the budget of Ra.One first. Before the release BoxOfficeIndia said Ra.One's final investment is 175 crore rupees.

In the sense, for the film to be an average, it must nett (not gross) 175 crores in collections. To be a hit, it must achieve considerable profits after recovering its investment of 175 crores.

What took me by surprise is BoxOfficeIndia declaring the film a hit even before it recovered its investment. The film made about 100 crore nett until now (it crashed drastically after the the first extended weekend). So I suspected bias and went to another trade analyst, Komal Nahta.

Mr.Nahta said the film is NOT a hit though it recovered its investment (but he also counted TV, satellite rights and subsidy given to the film in the collections, which is not the way it is done). As in, a movie's box office fate is ONLY decided by its theatrical collections, not its TV rights or anything else (If that was the case, almost every movie recovers its investment through satellite rights but they are not called successful or hits).

BoxOfficeKings labelled it as a flop.

Another trade site IBOSNetwork declared the film a flop and said "The distributors are set to suffer heavy losses."

Why such ambiguity in reporting the box office status of the film? How did Box office India declare the movie a hit even before it recovered its money? How did Mr.Nahta include satellite rights in the film's recovery? Finally, how can it be a hit when the distributors are suffering heavy losses?

My personal note on this - The film had a great start thanks to the fantastic publicity drive and record number of prints along with increased ticket prices due to 3D. But negative word of mouth and negative reviews immediately took the film's collections down in the weekdays and it doesn't stand a chance in recovering its final investment (seeing that film's business is almost done - Friday's collections are just about 2 crore).