Can Salman Khan, Akshay Kumar, John Abraham defeat Thanos-like Corona at the box office?

The second wave of the novel coronavirus has poured cold water over Bollywood's big box office plans. But can Salman Khan, Akshay Kumar and John Abraham tide us over?

The film industry is in a strange predicament - a karein toh karein kya situation. 2021 brought with it a promise of revival, as it were. Theatres opening up meant movies would release on the big screen once again and not on an OTT platform, which, in turn, would translate to business, perhaps just enough to break even last year's losses. Theatre owners were happy, the audience just wanted to go watch a movie and spend some money on over-priced popcorn and the Akshay Kumars and Salman Khans of Bollywood just wanted to entertain us once again, bade parde par. But then, deja vu! #BreakingNews: #BuntyAurBabli2 - which was scheduled to release in *cinemas* on 23 April 2021 - has been postponed... #YRF will announce the new release date later. #SaifAliKhan, #RaniMukerji, #SiddhantChaturvedi #Sharvari pic.twitter.com/nBsSw5swch April 2021 looks exactly like April 2020, if not scarier. Rising Covid-19 numbers are once again deterring movie releases. No, theatres aren't shut. Yet. But who knows? The 2021 movie release calendar was already a bottleneck with too many films eyeing the too few Fridays the year has to offer. Even then, a sort of agreement was reached. We'll release the small-to-medium-range films first to test the water - Indoo Ki Jawaani, Suraj Pe Mangal Bhari, Ramprasad Ki Tervi, Shakeela made way for Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar, Roohi, Mumbai Saga, Saina, and the likes. And then Covid caught up. Last we heard, the release dates of at least 5 films were pushed, of which 3 are big-ticket flicks, Bunty Aur Babli 2, Chehre and Haathi Mere Saathi, the Hindi version, even as the Tamil and Telugu versions released down South.