The Cursed Month of January: Part 1.

It is Bollywood folklore that January is a month where movies come to die. Careers have ended due to a release during this month.This is not entirely true, there are always exceptions but they are few and far apart.

Should aspiring film makers be afraid of this curse? Is the curse real or just a mater of bad content? It is a fact that all major releases happen in the second half of the year to stay in the eyes of the awards. But does releasing a film in January mean its the end of your career? 

I could take a look at all the January releases till date but in this ever evolving world of cinema the audience tend to forget the past in the abundance of films that come out each year. But let me recap a few January releases from 2010 -2014.

January 2010: The month that ended a lot of careers.

• Dulha Mil Gaya [Ended Fardeen Khan's career.]
• Pyaar Impossible [Ended Uday Chopra's career.]
• Chance Pe Dance [Ended Ken Ghosh's career.]
• Veer [Started & ended Salman Khan's writing career.]

The Exception: Ishqiya [Director Abhishek Chaubey's exceptional debut salvaged Vidya Balan's career and bagged her a couple of awards.]

January 2011: The Exceptional Month.

• No One Killed Jessica [Rani Mukherji saved her career with this and Vidya Balan gained momentum.]
• Yamla Pagla Deewana [Commercial Exception. High point in Dir. Samir Karnik's career, did what Apne couldn't do for the Deols.]
• Dhobi Ghat [Dir. Kiran Rao made her mark with this debut, it also did exceptional business for an art film.]

Not The Exception:  Dil Toh Baccha Hai Ji [Did not help Dir. Madhur Bhandarkar's downhill career, crashed Omi Vaidya's high dreams after 3 Idiots.]

January 2012: The month that wasted a lot of talent/resources.

• Players [Abhishek, Bipasha, Sonam, Neil, Bobby, Omi, Sikander, everyone involved with this film, including Dir. Abbas & Mustan, were on thin ice before this film. After the film's disaster their careers now lie in deep waters. Only a couple of them recovered.]
• Chaalis Chauraasi [Naseerudin Shah, Atul Kulkarni, Kay Kay Menon, Ravi Kissen together on screen sounds like a safe bet doesn't it? but it wasn't.]
• Ghost [The end of Shiney Ahuja, luckily no talent was wasted here.]

The Exception: Agneepath [Debutant Dir. Karan Malhotra did justice to this remake, did not waste the talent and the resources he had for this film. Also, Hrithik Roshan managed a film in the futile 100 Crore Club.]

January 2013: The month that had hope.

• Table No. 21 [Good performance, average flick. Inconsistency ruined the potential it had.] 
• Meri Shadi Karao [Lesser known launch pad for Daler Mehndi's son. There was no hope to begin with.]
• Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola [With Dir. Vishal Bhardwaj there is always hope but reality is a bitch.]
• Mumbai Mirror [If no one else, at least Sachiin Joshi had hopes with this one.]
• Akaash Vani [There was hope with Dir. Luv Rajan due to his Pyaar ka Punchnama. But this one lacked the punch.]

The Commercial Exception: Race 2 [Only considered an exception for its commercial success.]

The True Exception: Inkaar [Bad marketing ruined this for most of the audience but the performances and Dir. Sudhir Mishra's vision made this an exception.]

Things have changed in Bollywood drastically since 2013. But has the curse of January been broken? Wait for the second part for January 2014 review and the conclusion to this curse.