India, Aug. 18 -- To a layman, a successful film may look like a hit. The words superhit and blockbuster are also casually thrown around these days. But largely, the entertainment industry has parameters to define these terms. Any film making twice its landing cost at the box office can be termed a superhit. Anything more is blockbuster territory. Very few films ever go beyond 5x of a budget. Then what of this one film that earned over a hundred times its budget, and ran in theatres for over a year. This is the story of India's most profitable film.

In 2006, writer-director Yograj Bhatt made a romantic drama titled Mungaru Male. The low-budget Kannada film starred up-and-coming actors Ganesh and Pooja Gandhi, along with veteran thespian ...