There’s a sequence in Lucifer where Stephen Nedumpally, played by Mohanlal, gets arrested by the cops. In the scene, he ends up placing his leg on the senior policeman’s throat; however, shortly after he does this, the senior cop responds with a slap, unlike the cliched mass films where the unwritten rule is that the hero is never beaten up by the cops. Or for that matter anyone else.
In many ways, this sequence sums up the reason behind Mohanlal’s current dominance at the box office. Mohanlal, ‘Lalettan’ for Keralites, has been generally at the top of his game for close to four decades. However, post 2013, the dynamics have changed quite a bit with Mohanlal steadily distancing himself from his arch-rival Mammootty.
During this period, the former has three films (Pulimurugan, Lucifer, Drishyam) entering the top five worldwide grossers in Mollywood. A fourth film (Kayamkulam Kochunni) also in the top five had him in a cameo appearance.
Mohanlal’s stardom never vanished at any point but during the 2000s, he was certainly letting the public down with his poor choice of films. There was the occasional film which would strike gold at the box office and give him acclaim. However, there were very few of them in the 2000s in comparison to his golden period from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s. This decade didn’t start too well either with the box office debacle of Casanova, arguably the costliest Malayalam film at the time of its release.
In many ways, that spurred the actor to revamp his strategies. If you are a superstar, overexposure can make you look jaded. So deliberately and carefully, top heroes opt for one film a year and in rare cases, two. The likes of Rajnikanth and Aamir Khan prefer doing a film every two years. It was only Malayalam cinema that has defied this trend with both Mohanlal and Mammootty having a plethora of releases every year.
With the failure of Casanova, Mohanlal felt the need to cut down on the film count. If that incident kick-started the thought process, it took the massive success of Drishyam to get things going. The Jeethu Joseph-directorial was a record-breaker at the box office, and the film attained cult status.
Since 2014, Mohanlal has appeared in just three to four films at the most in a year – a moderately low count when it comes to Malayalam cinema. On an average, it means a film every three months and this spacing ensures that the audience isn’t getting burned out from an overdose of Mohanlal-starrers.
In any case, quite a lot of the films committed by the Big Ms (common term to refer to Mohanlal and Mammootty in unison) were on the basis of friendships and at times, purely for money rather than any conviction in the script. By pruning his annual film count, Mohanlal ensured that each film of his was getting sufficient breathing space for gaining hype and attention. He also ensured that at least one of his flicks was a big-budget project.
These biggies haven’t always been box office successes but in ensuring that he does at least one commercial biggie a year, he has managed to keep his core fan base engaged while also doing diverse and middle-of-the-road films. For example, 2014 saw him do just three films–of which, Mr Fraud and Peruchazhi were commercial films of different genres. At the same time, he also managed to do a family drama like Ennum Eppozhum to ensure that the family audiences, which are pivotal for any big star, stayed interested in his films.
Similarly, there has been a conscious effort from the superstar’s team to steadily build a market outside Kerala. It’s been a work in progress since 2015 and at present, is giving Mohanlal a clear head start over others in Mollywood. He has either roped in other language actors in his flicks as villain or has acted in non-Malayalam flicks like Mythiri (Kannada) and Manamantha (Telugu).
This might not be an explicitly-strategic move from the actor but in doing these projects, he has managed to build goodwill outside Kerala. 2016 reaffirmed this in a big way as he was part of Manamantha and the big commercial flick Janatha Garage featuring NTR Jr. in the lead role. These films were all dubbed in Malayalam too but it’s the rave reviews of his performances in the original version that proved beneficial for Mohanlal.
Therefore, when Pulimurugan arrived and shattered all records in Mollywood, its dubbed Telugu version also ended up as a superhit. Content and entertainment also matter though Mohanlal’s previous exposure to the industry at that time also worked wonders for him. In doing flicks like Villain, Odiyan and the recent Lucifer, he’s kept the strategy of having a biggie every year.
Mohanlal has also realized that the cliched superhuman mass hero doesn’t have any takers today. Pulimurugan and Lucifer had ample scope for the antagonist to prosper. The audience has changed and while a mass entertainer is still high on box office potential, it has to be made well for the film to succeed.
So, while he still commits the odd film to maintain personal friendships, his recently-expanded market ensures that even a potentially-weak film like Neerali opens decently. It’s not that Mohanlal hasn’t endured flops over the past five-six years. He has, but the count is really down and a major reason for that is his obvious choice to do fewer films every year.
More than a third of Mohanlal’s films from 2014 have been commercial and maintaining this quotient is crucial, especially at the fag end of your career as it ensures consistently big openings. This kind of planning and awareness is an area where his peer Mammootty got things horribly wrong in recent years.
