MUMBAI: Out of the 236 movies released so far this year, only about 15 have made it to the hit mark. The alarming number of flops in the year 2007 came as a huge shock, especially because it rained hits in 2006.

By the end of first quarter of the year, Bollywood had already suffered losses to the extent of Rs600 to Rs700 million. Till March, only one film, Guru emerged as a universal hit, with all the other ones like Nikhil Advani's Salaam-e-Ishq, Vidhu Vinod Chopra's Eklavya, Ram Gopal Varma's Nishabd, Vikram Bhatt's Red, Amrit Sagar's 1971, Milan Luthria's Hattrick, Anurag Kashyap's Black Friday, Deepa Mehta's Water, Meghna Gulzar's Just Married, Suneel Darshan's Shakalaka Boom Boom, hitting the dust. Nishabd and Eklavya turned out to be huge duds. Then Akshay Kumar's Namastey London was successful, bringing in the much-needed respite.

After July, films like Partner, Chak De India, Heyy Babyy, Bhool Bhulaiya, Jab We Met and the super hit Om Shanti Om attracted audiences, providing a bit of a breather for the distributors.   

Amod Mehra, trade analyst, says even then the trend is alarming. He says, "If you notice, apart from Chak De all the other films that have done well are those typical commercial formula films. We seem to have digressed back to the same tried-and-tested formula. People can scream their lungs out saying that script is the king, but the fact remains that the viewer is no longer ready to risk his money for anything that seems unlikely to entertain him, especially since multiplex rates have hit the roof.