The Astonishing reason Why Bhansali is daring to Clash with King Khan: Clash Theory Explained

If you found it interesting enough, I believe you would have seen The Beautiful mind, a biopic on Dr. John Nash who came up with an interesting addition to Game theory. In simple words, every decision making involving opponents is like a game where next move is not only dependent on your intelligence but also on your speculations about what competition knows and would do. Choices depend upon actions of others as well as beliefs of actions of others (under uncertainty).
It’s a complex loop where you know that he knows what you know while he may think the same....

It also depends on the your perception of the products both of you have. Here the decision makers are Red Chillies Entertainment and Eros International and their products are Dilwale and Bajirao Mastaani respectively. Both the houses will try to act in their best interests given other’s strategy, maximizing their welfare (payoffs) and possibly attain Nash Equilibrium where in each player’s strategy is a best response to others’ strategies. This game is popularly referred to as Prisoner's Dilemma.

While 25th is a Christmas holiday, releasing on 18th comes with two advantages. First, releasing on 18th lets you take advantage of the big holiday of 25th. If the film had released on 25th, it would have by itself(thanks to dedicated fans) got big numbers but now releasing on 18th, it will have two big Fridays. Secondly, it will give the films a longer window to run given the next big Hindi film comes in January second week. But now since both are releasing on the same day i.e. 18th, the screens are split (though still in favor of Dilwale) and both the films will be eating into each other’s pie.
The moves are explained by the payoff matrix where the possible outcomes are given in each block for the two films for the two release dates.The payoff as indicated in brackets are just for comparative analysis, an indication and should not be taken as box office numbers. The ratio ~ 2:1 given the screen sharing ratio is similar (4000 : 2500) in favor of Dilwale.
So should either of them consider moving to 25th?

So there are 4 possible states including the current state:
Both stayed at current release date: As you can see, the payoff i.e. the total earnings is highest for this window given it includes the 25th (as explained above). But the payoff is shared thus reducing individual share of the pie. Whichever films turns out to be better will enjoy more success though both houses believe that their film is better than the other’s. Even the loser will be making quite a good moolah since it will enjoy from the initial excitement (the high payoffs (40, 25)).

Dilwale Stayed on 18th while Bajirao moved: This is the case when Eros doesn't have higher faith in its product when compared with Dilwale. For instance, it believes that Dilwale will romp the 18th weekend and it is no point fighting the elephant. 25th will be a safer bet as Dilwale may slow down ( for the lack of good content) giving Bajirao an open field. It can also demand better share of screens given Dilwale will be in week 2 of its release and much of its demand would have been satiated by then.
But what if Bajirao turns out to be a better film?: liked more by the masses. Then Bajirao would be leaving money on table by releasing a week late since it should not be expected of movie going families to spend big money on two weekends back to back. But if it turns out to be a bad film, it will be completely run down by Dilwale as was Once upon a time in Mumbai 2 by Chennai Express.

Dilwale moved to 25th while Bajirao stayed on 18th: It has the same explanation as above with the roles reversed. It is apparent that it is a losing proposition to move to 25th when the other is staying back on 18th and since as per dynamics of competition, both sides would have already evaluated the payoffs for all the cases.

Both moved to 25th: This case will again be similar as the current conundrum and in this case both are losing money on the table. Also some of the screens will be taken by the big Hollywood release Star Wars:TFA.
There are no big releases since past few weeks and the audience is hungry to go back to the theaters. It is wiser to go for this 18th than 25th (as shown with higher payoffs).

Thus we can see why the films are releasing on the same day i.e. 18th. One may argue what’s in the release date and that a good content film shall prevail in the longer run. But today, most films are front loaded i.e. they recover most of the money in initial weekends (given the higher distribution share in favor of distributors).
On a personal note, I believe Bajirao should have moved to safer release date of Republic day weekend given the track record of SRK in such duels, who has always come out on top and further, Dilwale is a wider appealing film while Bajirao is not.
Let us hope we are treated with two amazing entertainers and both films do well at the box office.


Disclaimer: This article is a personal opinion/research/analysis and does not represent views of MyMovieRack in any form. The author is an MBA student at a premier B school with deep interests in economics and movies.