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Kangana Ranaut's latest release Dhaakad (left) has flopped at the box office.
With its opening day earnings hitting less than Rs1 crore ($177,360), reports suggest that the film's screenings in theatres in India are being cancelled due to a lack of audience. The screens have been given to the Kartik Aaryan and Kiara Advani-starrer Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2, this year's highest-grossing Bollywood film.
Kangana, who is often vocal about her political and social opinions, has her fair share of detractors and they are now celebrating Dhaakad's failure.
Made on a budget of Rs80 crore, Dhaakad collected only Rs3.22 crore in three days. In comparison, Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2 collected at least Rs50 crore over the weekend.
A netizen, taking a dig at Dhaakad's failure, tweeted that even a bulldozer could gather more crowd than Dhaakad.
Another netizen @iHrithiksSniper commented: "#KanganaRanaut has given 9 back-to-back flops. Some of them are disasters of epic proportions. Yet she keeps getting movies after movies. This is exactly how nepotism looks like."
Actress Payal Rohatgi, who was last seen in Kangana's reality show Lock-Upp, also took a dig at her, saying: "Karma is a b***h."
But Bigg Boss contestant Tehseen Poonawalla defended Kangana. He wrote: "The trolling of #KanganaRanaut is extremely unfair! We may agree or disagree with #KanganaRanaut but cannot take away from the fact she is one of the best actors in cinema today and a risk taker. More power to you #KanganaRanaut."
A journalist then responded with: "That's ridiculous. The audience has rejected a bad film which is going zero in shows. Telling the truth is trolling?"
Undeterred, Tehseen replied: "No! The celebration of a movie flopping is not good!"
Actress Richa Chadha also jumped into the conversation with a tweet: "Aligning with power is easy and has obvious rewards like tax exemptions, awards, special status, security - even the legislature promoting a film! So do you not know that the reverse also holds true, Tehseen? People are expressing dissent in whatever way they can. So chill."
Richa pointed at how Kangana was one of the loudest voices criticising Bollywood celebrities last year amid the drugs case controversy involving Shah Rukh Khan's son Aryan.
Kangana had even called the film industry "gutter".
"Very systematically, a narrative was built that the film industry in Mumbai was the den of all vice. People here are murderous, etc. Many people participated in this narrative building. Now some others celebrating other people's downfalls is an unfortunate consequence of that," Richa wrote.
But she added that a film's failure should not be celebrated. "Yes. It's morally wrong and also because thousands of people work on a film. But also, it happens. And to everyone," she wrote.
Richa was previously publicly called a "jobless actor" by Kangana's sister Rangoli Chandel.
Indo-Asian News Service
