What happened to these big newsmakers in 2016?

 Kahaan gaye wohlog? What happened to them? Weren’t they ruling boxoffice and defining the rules  of stardom just the other year? What happened to these  big newsmakers in 2016?

1. Katrina Kaif: The darling of the masses, adored because she’s adorable.Two back-to-back superflops Fitoor and Baar Baar Dekho and a disastrous love liaison saw Katrina fade from the marquee. It will now take a miracle to see her up there again. Karan Johar and Adi Chopra may be counted among her friends. But we don’t see any of these big names lining up to sign her.
2. Anurag Kashyap: The self-appointed savior of Indian cinema, the filmmaker who was destined to put us back on the global map,delivered a row of flops topped of course by Bombay Velvet which figures  among the noisiest fiascos of all times in the league  of Kamal Amrohi’s Razia Sultan and H R Rawail’s Deedar-e-Yaar.This year Kashyap’s Raman Raghav encored his singleminded devotion to portyaing the sordid and the scummy.Kashyap seriously needs to reinvent himself
3. Emraan Hashmi: End Of The Road for the serial kisser, as other more slurpy smoochers like Arjun Kapoor and  Ranveer Singh showed up. After a  series of  flops his hopes were pinned on Azhar. Sadly even the bio-pic boom couldn’t help the film’s poor collections. Now a  miracle is awaited in Emraan’s career.
4. Prakash Jha:  He pioneered the movement of  the new-wave cinema into the mainstream. Big budget political dramas like Satyagraha and Aarakshan have proven boxoffice duds. Jai Gangaajal in 2016 where he played the leading man in his own film showed how far his creative vision had drifted from its original goals.
5. Aditya Roy Kapoor: Before Aashiqui 2 he was struggling to find his voice. Now after Fitoor in 2016 he is back where he started. Contemporaries like Ranveer Singh and Varun Dhawan have raced far ahead. Can Ok Jaanu with his Aashiqui co-star Shradha Kapoor(they are only colleagues and co-stars, okay?) save ARK’s career?
6. Parineeti Chopra: A selfimposed sabbatical gave her contemporaries Alia Bhatt , Shradha Kapoor and Kriti Sanon a chance to race ahead. Parineeti should hear what Mr Amitabh Bachchan has to say about actors taking sabbaticals vis-à-vis his own selfimposed exile of 3 years. “It’s very arrogant to think everything would be the same when an actor decides to return.”We do hope Parineeti’s Meri Pyari Bindu pays off.
7. Neil Nitin Mukesh: What happened to the actor whose name pays a homage to a legendary astronaut and a legendary singer? Neil even tried some villainy in  Prem Ratan Dhan Payo and Wazir. Now he’s looking at marriage to save his career.Married actors do well in Bollywood .
8. Randeep Hooda: Sterling performances in 2016 in Sarbjit and Yeh Laal Rang could not stem his downward spiral. Both Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Hooda, exceptionally talented actors,need to realize audiences don’t want to see them as leading men.A case in point: Sultan where Hooda played Salman’s trainer was seen by more people than all of Randeep Hooda’s films put together, barring Kick.
9. Sunny Deol: It’s truly heartrending to hear that Sunny Paaji who once,  not too long ago, was the undisputed  Lion  of Bollywood ’s jungle, is struggling to get a leading lady for himself. Ghayal Returns which he directed and starred in 2016 was a flop, proving that the ghayal actor stands little chance of returning.
10. Preity Zinta: A career lost to the IPL. One false business move wiped this hottie’s career  out of  the Bollywood map. In spite of a secret marriage at the beginning of 2016 Preity remained out of the news. Bhaiyyaji Superhit, the only film she has on hand, sounds more like wishful thinking than  a real attempt to resurrect her career.