Everyone’s astonished and surprised because ‘Luck By Chance’ was believed to demonstrate one more jewel in the crown of Excel [Farhan Akhtar and Ritesh Sidhwani's production outfit], after ‘Rock On!!’, but the film failed to take off. Everyone’s shocked because ‘Victory’ failed to fetch a face-saving start. Its business would make Harman’s [or is it Hurman] colossal flop ‘Love Story 2050’ look like an epic.

Let’s talk of ‘Luck By Chance’ first! I’ve regularly said and I’d like to repeat the fact that box-office can be most random. ‘Rock On!!’ took a speedy start, but ‘Luck By Chance’, in spite of winning rave reviews, was limping in its debut weekend.

Unbelievable reviews [at par with Slumdog Millionaire], great word of mouth and a inspiring promotional campaign couldn’t do the trick. The attractive star cast, with more than a dozen cameos from top-of-the-line stars, didn’t help either. To put it frankly, there were barely any takers for this well-made film.

A section of the industry feels that the English title was a put-off. I don’t give to this theory for the reason that nearly every Hindi film today has an English name. Why, even ‘Rock On!!’ was an English title, but did it confirm to be a restriction? One more theory doing the rounds is, the topic [film industry] wouldn’t appeal to the common man, unless it’s supported by strong drama. Almost four decades ago, Hrishida’s ‘Guddi’ had the same setting and it worked big time. I guess, we start making excuses when a film fails.

The bitter fact is, ‘Luck By Chance’ has been known a miss by most moviegoers for reasons unknown to all of us. You can never read the moviegoer’s mind, really. For Big Pictures, its distributors, ‘Luck By Chance’ is a monetary retard, given the fact that the film was sold for a big price.

Now ‘Victory’! I rubbed my eyes in incredulity when you keep investigation of its box-office collections at many centre. Agreed, ‘Victory’ lacked in merits, but no one expected the film to collect 1/4th or 1/5th of what ‘Love Story 2050’ collected in its opening weekend. You can well visualize how poor and tragic the business of the film is. In fact, it would be an accomplishment if the film manages to total an whole week at several screens, since the collections are as good as zilch.

You’d be astonished to know that ultimate disasters like ‘Drona’ and ‘Love Story 2050’ had a better weekend than ‘Victory’. The collections, even at plexes, are as low as 2% and 3%. Only goes to show that what may be hot within the industry, may not essentially be hot with moviegoers.

The collapse of ‘Victory’ will hit Harman’s approaching films hard. You’re as good or bad as your last Friday and the last two Fridays in Harman’s life have been sad. Sad, but true!