Forbes: Why Aamir Khan's 'Secret Superstar' Could Still Wind Up As Bollywood's Biggest Hit Of 2017

Now in the fourth week of its Indian theatrical run, Secret Superstar has run out of gas and will soon wind up its domestic release with a lifetime total box office gross of about ₹83 crore/$12.8 million. That puts it somewhere around 20th place among all of the Bollywood pictures released in 2017, and far, far behind the year’s number one highest-grosser, Golmaal Again.

When we include worldwide grosses, Golmaal Again’s total of nearly ₹300 crore/$46 million at first glance looks insurmountable for Secret Superstar—which is now at ₹123  crore worldwide—even though the Aamir Khan picture has a few important overseas territories in which it still has yet to release.

And yet despite the huge deficit it faces, Secret Superstar still has a solid chance of beating Golmaal Again’s worldwide total. In fact, I daresay it has an excellent chance. Here’s why.


The important territories I mentioned are China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, where Khan is hugely popular. His last picture, Dangal, earned aggregate theatrical receipts of ₹1,315 crore ($202 million) in those three territories alone, with mainland China accounting for the vast majority of that total.

Given how well Secret Superstar has already performed in other overseas territories where Khan is a major box office draw, it’s reasonable to assume that the picture will play well in the Chinese-speaking countries, where his last few films—Dangal, PK, and Dhoom 3—have over-indexed.

Of course it’s unlikely that Secret Superstar will accumulate anything close to Dangal-sized grosses in these territories. But it doesn’t need to in order to surpass Golmaal Again. A ₹200 crore aggregate gross in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong should put Secret Superstar well past the Ajay Devgn comedy’s worldwide cume. That’s just 15 percent of what Dangal earned in the three countries.

Seeing that Secret Superstar has already earned 15 percent or more of Dangal’s lifetime gross in each and every major international territory where it has already rolled out, it would be surprising if it doesn’t repeat that feat in Greater China. If it does as well as it did in the UK, New Zealand, the UAE and Turkey—all places where it earned 20 percent or more of Dangal’s cume—it could wind up with ₹300 crore or more in the Greater China region alone.