Second highest grossing film after ‘Sholay’ in the year 1975.
Nowadays, the trend of big budget films seems to be going on. Every big film maker is making films with a budget ranging from Rs 100-200 to Rs 500 crore. Many of these films earn huge profits while others are not successful in getting their returns. But, about 48 years ago, a film was released in theaters which created havoc at the box office. Made in the 70s, this film gave a tough competition to the cult classic ‘Sholay’ starring superstars like Amitabh Bachchan-Dharmendra, that too without any big star. We are talking about ‘Jai Santoshi Maa’, released in 1975, whose budget at that time was only Rs 25 lakh, but it collected more than Rs 5 crore at the box office. But even after this the producers of the film became poor, let us tell you how.
The film made great records
The director of this film was Vijay Sharma, in which actors like Anita Guha, Kanan Kaushal and Rajni Bala worked. This film came at a time when mythology films were less popular. Very few people watched such films. Many religious films came before this film, but could not show anything special. But the film “Jai Santoshi Maa” did wonders and this film ran for about 50 weeks in many theaters of Bandra itself. This was a big and very brilliant record at that time.
The producer did not get anything
According to the report of sacnilk, the budget of “Jai Santoshi Maa”, made under the direction of Vijay Sharma, was around Rs 25 lakh and the film made a huge earning of around Rs 5 crore at the box office. When the film was released, it earned Rs 56 from the first show, Rs 64 from the second and Rs 100 from the third. Due to which the film was declared a flop, but then something happened that a crowd of spectators gathered outside the theaters to watch the film.
Couldn’t find buyer
No one was ready to buy the film ‘Jai Santoshi Maa’. In such a situation, Kedarnath Aggarwal and Sandeep Sethi decided to distribute this film. It is said that when the film did great business, his (Kedarnath) brothers messed up and embezzled all the money. And the film’s producer Satram Rohra declared himself bankrupt. Besides this, Kedarnath also did not get anything. At that time business analysts called it a flop film. But after this, the word of mouth publicity received from the audience helped it in bringing the audience to the theatres. Within no time this film became a big hit.
