'Bodyguard' was always supposed to get a clean run en route to its mid-week release on Eid/Ganesh Chaturthi which fell on Wednesday/Thursday respectively. What further paved the way was the disastrous performance of releases in the previous weeks - 'Chitkabrey - Shades of Grey', 'Stand By', 'Yeh Dooriyaan' and 'Shabri'.

All four films have proven to be trade setbacks with near nil occupancy during bare minimum number of shows that they played. It was hard to distinguish one film from another when it came to competition around better collections. With only a few thousands bucks coming in from a few shows (and not even lakhs), picture was quite clear for these low budget films that added on to the pile of disasters that Bollywood has given this year.

To think of it, the only two big budget films that have failed this year are 'Game' and 'Aarakshan'. While 'Game' has been a huge disaster, 'Aarakshan' has been a flop. However if one leaves these two films aside, every other biggie has managed to make money at the box office, hence turning out to be a much better situation for Bollywood when compared to 2010 and years before that when success rate of biggies had surprisingly plummeted.

On the other hand success rate of small budget films has been, to put it mildly, pathetic this year. Though a few medium budget films have still done reasonably fell, most films with a budget of less than 5 crores have been unmitigated disasters. What does that prove? Well two straight forward points that a) Just a one line concept doesn't make a good movie and b) You need some marketing and promotional machinery in place at the least even for the smallest of films; they can't run on their own.

Will things change this year? Well, not for small films at the least as there are at least twenty more waiting to hit the screen before year end. Worse, some of them are arriving in and around the biggies that come with a potential of crossing 100 crores each at the box office. No wonder, future is indeed looking dark for small films.