The year is halfway through, but Bollywood has very little to cheer about. More than Rs 3 billion has gone into making films, but half of the amount sank beyond recovery.

The ratio of success and failure in Bollywood has for the past many years been 5/6:100 - it means, out of 100 movies released in a given year, only five or six manage to hit the jackpot.

The industry takes solace in the fact that of the 47 movies released in the last six months, at least two - “Race” and “Jannat” - turned out to be genuine hits, bringing cheer to producers, distributors and exhibitors.

“Race”, an Abbas-Mustan-directed racy thriller, was an instantaneous success, unlike “Jannat”.

Though an equally piquant movie based on the subject of match fixing in cricket, “Jannat” was a slow starter.

But eventually it reached the finishing line, doing a business of Rs 400 million on an investment of Rs 100 million. That’s all that matters to merit it the status of being a hit movie.

According to trade analyst Vinod Mirani, “Jodhaa Akbar” was more successful in the overseas market than in India. “A bulk of the revenue it earned came from abroad rather than what was generated in the domestic market,” he said.

Said distributor Vinod Kakkad: “It (”Jodhaa Akbar”) did good business all over as no one lost money on it, but it was not a universal success.”

Rajat Kapoor’s “Mithya” might not have drawn huge crowds everywhere, but the movie was a success because it recovered the modest investment that had gone into it, just as “Bheja Fry” had done last year.

What happened to the remaining 43 movies?

Of course, they were not all flops. They passed the box-office test with varying grades.

Even “Tashan”, “Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic” and “Krazzy4″ that had the honour of being produced by two of Bollywood’s revered banners, Yash Raj Films and Filmkraft respectively, were rejected.

Subhash Ghai’s “Black and White” and Ravi Chopra’s “Bhoothnath”, though reasonably good movies, too didn’t meet with success.

But that, according to Mirani, has not come in the way of “Sarkar Raj” being declared a hit.

“The film has earned revenues, but not as much as it was expected. Since the film was sold to the distributors at a very high price, it will take the latter some time to recover the money put in,” he said.

With two much-hyped films - “Love Story 2050″ and “Jaane Tu… Ya Jane Na” - having released Friday, the revenue collection for “Sarkar Raj” will further dip,” stated a Bollywood film trade magazine.

But the worldwide distributor of “Sarkar Raj”, Balaji Films, has refused to buy this. It has openly declared that the movie is a “hit”.

If it is so, that makes it three hits in the last six months, four if “Jodhaa Akbar” is also taken into account.