Did You Know: 'Awara' Directed By Raj Kapoor Made $35 Million Worldwide In 1968 - Highest Grossing Non-English Film Since 1940!

Shekhar Kapur, a filmmaker, is renowned for saying things out loud, and occasionally some of those utterances are the rarest of the rare facts. 'The Mr. India' filmmaker revealed that he had this time provided a goldmine of a box office report in a Twitter post, and moviegoers were shocked to learn and read about the data. Even the existing method of filmmaking was called into question by him, and while some people agreed with him, others disputed his claims.

Shekhar Kapur talked about the 40s, 50s, and 60s as a time period for filmmaking. The eras of Raj Kapoor and Nargis, Madhubala and Dilip Kumar, and their ultimate reigns were unquestionably and unquestionably powerful enough to hold the fort at the box office globally. When discussing the global box office successes of those times, the 'Bandit Queen' director revealed a peculiar fact.

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"Did you know that all the highest-grossing non-English language films worldwide between 1940 and 1968 were ALL Indian Films?" tweeted Shekhar Kapur on his Twitter page. Raj Kapoor's #Awara, which had a 1968 global box office gross of about US$ 35 million, was the highest of those. The director's post was concluded by an unsettling question "What happened to us after that?"

Twitter users responded overwhelmingly to Shekhar's tweet. Others questioned the tweet's veracity, while some cherished the fact. Some people simply wanted to know where the information came from. "We started making films only specifically for our people (and still do that)," a user said. In response, Shekhar said, "So was Awara."

Another statement explained why Bollywood was no longer among the highest-grossing films. The message said, "Become anti-Hindu #urduwood." As he added another fact, Kapur was quick to set the record by saying, "Mughal e Azam was second highest. Another Twitter user made the following argument: "Bad scripts, storyline, originality, and last but not least nepotism."

Another person made a valid point by stating, "We forgot our own civilisational strength - storytelling." A second person had a similar viewpoint when they wrote, “The Indian film industry lost their “dare” to tell new stories, new plots, raise real social issues. Almost all movies became a money-making mix of boy meets girl, with a lot of musicals. Movies that made money but did not bring anything new.”

Some people, though, disputed the veracity of these facts. One user commented, “Lmao …you really need to stop spreading fake news ….the highest grossing movie of 1968 was funny girl Columbia Pictures and it grossed $24,900,000 so how can Awara gross that unfathomable amount.”

Another person tweeted, "Finish Paani and recreate history!" in an attempt to see some hope in Shekhar Kapur. For the uninitiated, Shekhar Kapur was tasked with producing the science fiction movie 'Paani', which had Aditya Chopra's support and Sushant Singh Rajput in the starring role. However, Yash Raj Films wanted a bigger star to pull off such a film because the movie's budget was so excessively high.

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Paani was later shelved after Sushant Singh Rajput's passing. Additionally, it was said that a remake of 'Mr. India' was in the works, but the director shelved the project after the deaths of Sridevi and Satish Kaushik, two of his closest friends. Currently, Kapur is putting the finishing touches on an Indianized 'Harry Potter.'