bollywood may be broken and it has itself to blame thats the verdict of one of its biggest and brightest stars after the latest flop in a hindilanguage movie industry thats long mesmerised indians and the world with its dazzling allsinging alldancing brand of bigscreen escapismfilms are not working its our fault its my fault akshay kumar told reporters last month after his new movie raksha bandhantanked at the box officeread alsodid aamir khan productions tweet and delete an apology video for laal singh chaddha failure fans ask if the account was hackedaamir khan and kareena kapoor khan starrer laal singh chaddha was released recently in theatres and the film performed miserably at the box office the actors received a lot of hate online reportedly aamir has decided to waive his fees to compensate for the producers loss recently aamirsi have to make the changes i have to understand what the audience wants i want to dismantle the way i think about what kind of films i should doindeed times have changed and bollywood a cultural pillar of modern india is losing its allure the rise of streaming services like netflix and amazon prime during the covid pandemic has conspired with growing bollywood fatigue among younger generations who view many of its movies as outdated and unfashionableof the 26 bollywood releases this year 20 or 77 have been flops defined as losing half or more of their investment according to the koimoi website which tracks industry datathats about double the failure rate of 39 in 2019 before the pandemic shook up society and forced hundreds of millions of indians to wean themselves off cinemas for decades the bastion of bollywood and its main source of revenuechristina sundaresan a 40yearold mother of two teenage girls in mumbai used to see at least one bollywood movie a week in the cinema before the pandemic now she rarely goes i mean they are okay to watch when you need a laugh but i would not go to a theatre for them she said my daughters used to watch every movie with us but now theyre not interested either they are very much into korean shows and series which air on these streaming platformstheyre not alone in converting to international streaming services which came to india relatively late netflix and amazon prime launched in 2016 offering varied content made in america and europe as well as india and elsewhere in asia from parasite and avengers to squid game and game of thronesa quarter of indias 14 billion people now use such services up from about 12 in 2019 according to market data firm statista the figure is expected to hit 31 by 2027 and theres room to grow takeup is about 80 in north america for exampleso whats the problemindian boxoffice revenues had risen every year for a decade to reach around 2 billion in 2019 before slumping during the pandemic they show little sign of bouncing backticket sales