A still from Fighter. (courtesy: YouTube)
Hrithik Roshan's Fighter has had its fair share of fluctuations at the box office. On day 15, the Siddharth Anand film made Rs 2.65 crore at the Indian box office (across all languages), as per a Sacnilk report. In total, the film has collected Rs 187.40 crore, the report added. Released on January 25, Fighter featured Hrithik Roshan as Squadron Leader Shamsher Pathania (aka Patty) and Deepika Padukone in the role of Squadron Leader Minal Rathore (aka Mini). The cast also included Anil Kapoor portraying Group Captain Rakesh Jai Singh, Karan Singh Grover as Sartaj Gill, and Akshay Oberoi as Basheer Khan.
In a recent interview with Galatta Plus, Fighter's director, Siddharth Anand shed light on why the film may not have met expectations at the box office. He said, “Fighter is a huge leap. As filmmakers do this in the country, and the kind of genre it is. It's a space that is unexplored, and is absolutely new. It has no reference point for the audience, that means what they are seeing is a little... accha... such big stars, a commercial director, accha ye planes kya kar rahi he [what are these planes doing?] I am like is this my film, I don't know this.”
In an NDTV review, Saibal Chatterjee gave Fighter 2.5 stars and wrote, “Fighter is a competently mounted, shot and edited film. It will probably find the fans that it is looking for. However, despite Deepika Padukone adding to the star power quotient, the film feels vacuous and vapid. The problem lies in its storyline - it is a compilation of cliches. The biggest one rests on the shrill bluster that offence is always the best form of defence, and the best response to deceit is instant revenge. That locates Fighter firmly in the narrow construct that Bollywood war films operate within.”
Viacom18 Studios and Marflix Pictures have jointly backed Fighter.