India, Feb. 20 -- At a time when opening weekend figures and lifetime collections often determine how long a film survives in cinemas, box office numbers have become an important part of Bollywood's publicity machinery. From influencing audience perception to dictating screen allocations, the figures shape the narrative around a film's success or failure. However, filmmaker Anubhav Sinha believes the obsession with numbers has gone too far. In a recent interview with Screen, the director said he does not want to publicise the box office figures of his latest release, Assi, arguing that such statistics have turned into "good gossip" rather than meaningful indicators of a film's worth.

Speaking about the culture of headline-grabbing collec...