Before Gold, tracking Akshay Kumar’s rise and rise as most dependable star in last 10 years | Bollywood - Hindustan Times
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Before Gold, tracking Akshay Kumar’s rise and rise as most dependable star in last 10 years

Hindustan Times | By, New Delhi
Aug 14, 2018 12:06 PM IST

Akshay Kumar’s career chart in the last 10 years proves that he is the most bankable star in the country right now.

With Gold, Akshay Kumar is once again expected to give box office a fillip on Independence Day. His film, with its patriotic theme, is expected to open to packed houses and sashay into the Rs 100-crore club in a week or two.

Akshay Kumar during promotion of the upcoming film Gold, in Kolkata on Thursday.(PTI)
Akshay Kumar during promotion of the upcoming film Gold, in Kolkata on Thursday.(PTI)

Definitely underrated, especially in terms of box office numbers, Akshay has managed to stand up to the Khans’ commercial draw in the past and continues to do so. He has been a constant on the Forbes’ highest paid actors’ list in the world and that is no fluke. Gold, it seems, will cement his position further.

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It was probably around 2007 when Akshay started breaking into the big league of Bollywood stars. At that time, Akshay Kumar, Ajay Devgn and Hrithik Roshan were jostling to get past each other in order to challenge the Khan trio. He started getting closer to the numero uno spot and after 10 fruitful years – starting 2007 -- he is at a stage where he can rise past the competition.

So, when we decided to analyse his career, we took 2007 as the base year as that was the beginning of the brand Akshay Kumar. Also, it gave us a bandwidth of 10 years that eventually made us see certain patterns easily. We haven’t included the films in which he did a cameo or a voiceover as he wasn’t directly responsible for their performances.

He has done 39 films, out of which 16 are multi-starrers, in the given period. Here’s a graph that will tell you exactly how much his films have earned in these years. With 2012 being the game-changing year for Akshay, he went from strength to strength after this.

But what about the multi-starrers? He was the most popular face of all the ensemble films he has done. From John Abraham and Sanjay Dutt to Riteish Deshmukh and Anil Kapoor, he worked with some talented actors, but the onus was mostly on him to achieve commercial success.

Out of 16 multi-starrers, six are hits and three are moderately successful, so that takes his success percentage to 56.25%. Here’s a graph that will explain it for you.

His overall success percentage is better than multi-starrers. Out of 39 films, 25 of his solo films have either managed to break even or have made profits. That shows why he is one of the most bankable actors to play the solo lead.

 

Akshay Kumar has moulded himself as a comic actor who is also good at drama and action. It’s a great transition from just being an action star in the ‘90s. But what happens when his films release with other big stars or well publicised films? This year, Gold will go head to head with John Abraham’s Satyameva Jayate but it is clearly advantage Akshay at the box office. In fact, since 2010, he hasn’t lost a single box office fight when faced with another film releasing on the same day.

Gold, directed by Reema Kagti, also marks TV actor Mouni Roy’s Bollywood debut and features Amit Sadh, Kunal Kapoor, Vineet Singh in supporting roles. In the movie, Akshay plays manager Tapan Das, who led India to its first Olympic gold as an independent nation in a fictional 1948. In all probability, Gold is going to make Akshay’s career graph look better.

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  • ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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    Rohit Vats is a film journalist who loves to read in between the lines. He can spend hours watching films and cricket matches. Also a script consultant.

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