This Salman Khan film earned only Rs 90 lakh in India and just over Rs 2 crore worldwide. The director quit filmmaking after this and the leading actress never worked in Hindi cinema again

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Salman Khan is one of the biggest stars of his generation globally. The actor has dominated the Hindi entertainment industry – along with the two other Khans and Akshay Kumar – for close to 30 years npw. Yet, it has not always been smooth sailing for him at the box office. Salman has seen his fair share of flops. But one in particular sticks out. It remains the only Salman film in the last 25 years to not even earn Rs 1 crore in India, arguably making it the actor’s biggest flop.

Salman Khan’s biggest flop, which earned Rs 90 lakh

In 2007, American director Willard Carroll was in India and he watched a Bollywood film, following which he said he watched 150 more and decided to make a ‘crossover film’. He hired Ali Larter (Resident Evil and Final Destination fame) with whom he worked earlier and also cast Salman Khan. The film was Marigold, a romantic drama about an American actress who comes off age on a trip to India where she meets an Indian prince. However, the film was not well received well by critics and flopped commercially. Marigold earned only Rs 90 lakh net in India. Even overseas, it did not fare well despite Larter’s presence, grossing Rs 2.29 crore worldwide. It remains Salman’s lowest-grossing film since the 90s.

Willard Carroll and Ali Larter after Marigold

Carroll had wanted Marigold to be his breakthrough film in India but it did not pan out like that. In its review of the film, The Hollywood Reporter called it the work an American director “slumming in a genre outside his own culture, and Western audiences unfamiliar with Hindi-language masala movies will find the whole thing puzzling”. Marigold was Carroll’s final film as a director, writer or producer. In the last 16 years, he has not worked on a single film. Ali Larter, being a recognised face in Hollywood, fared better, working in the TV show Heroes, and returning to play  Claire in Resident Evil sequels. She did no, however, work in another Hindi film after Marigold.