Does the failure of 'Jhund' spell trouble for sports films?

Come on, be a sport!  That’s the chosen field of recreation for many forthcoming films including Amit Sharma’s Badhai Ho and Maidaan, Srijit Mukherji’s Begum Jaan and Shabaash Mithu and Anushka Sharma helmed cricket-biopic Chakda Xpress. The list of forthcoming sports film gets longer by the month. Should that be a reason to be happy? Not for the makers of Jersey whose cricket film about Shahid Kapoor losing and regaining his career, is the next sports film on release. The producers are reportedly worried after the crippling failure of Kabir Khan’s cricket film 83. But I think they have nothing to worry about, 83 failed because the reported 220 crores that were spent in its making were not visible on screen. Who can see the most expensive London hotels where Ranveer Singh reportedly insisted on staying? And who gives a flying duck if the climactic cricket match was shot at Lords, the poshest stadium in the world? Also, today’s generation is not at all emotionally connected with Kapil Dev and team’s Gold Cup victory in 1983 whereas Shahid Kapoor’s Jersey has cricket only as a backdrop. The main plot is an emotional heart-tugging father-son story. So, Jersey can breathe easy. Which brings us to the biggest problem that sports film has to face: the expenses don’t show in the product. Nagraj Manjule’s Jhund was not as costly a film to make as Kabir Khan’s 83. But it was nonetheless a very expensive film (estimated budget 90-100 crores) in spite of only one star in the cast Amitabh Bachchan. The rest were actual slum kids who were apparently paid peanuts. And yet Jhund is a costly disaster for its producers. Considering the enormity of its failure (it did not even get an opening) the losses run into a minimum of 40-50 crores. [caption id=“attachment_10435811” align=“alignnone” width=“300”]  A still from Nagraj Manjule’s Jhund[/caption] Manjule   who earlier made tightly-budgeted Marathi films didn’t know how to handle the sudden swing from a 5-crore filmy fling to a 90-crore cinematic affair. This often happens with auteur directors who are saddled with the responsibility of directing superstar-driven big-budget projects. The biggest problem with Jhund was its length.  Watching a three-hours long film was a slog. If the content had been edited down to two hours   it would have been a much more digestible film. Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based film critic who has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha.