Box Office Analysis

First weekend performance of latest release

The world knows by now about how Rang De Basanti has fared in its opening weekend. To state the obvious, the movie opened to full houses across globe and attracted people from all nook and corners to fill up 'show-an-hour' running at hundreds of multiplex screens. Breaking records at number of places [especially metros], the movie is on way to be one of the biggest grossers in the history of Indian cinema (at minimum of 35 crore looks quite possible).

The movie has found wholesome appreciation from 99% of critics and 'junta' while Aamir Khan's 'generous' act of allowing other actors to share the frames has helped the project in totality. RDB is a success story in the making and has brought to fore Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra as an accomplished director.

Last week's movies

RDB scared film makers to release any movie last week! That's the power of Aamir Khan.

From the past

It was Rang De Basanti mania everywhere and the collections by coming weekend should tell an interesting tale about the movie's first week earnings. Meanwhile 'Family' has turned into a non-debatable disaster with now even Amitabh Bachchan confessing that he had doubts about the movie, especially his role, since it looked too similar to 'Sarkar'. Well, the damage is done and now he has two back to back movies behind him that didn't work as expected - 'Ek Ajnabee' and 'Family'. There were just around a couple of crores added to its total in the second week, which is hardly a good news.

'Zinda' did better than 'Family', though even it wasn't exceptional in the second week. Nevertheless, this movie made for a selective audience did reasonable OK in metros [its target audience] but any prospects of a long run for either 'Family' and 'Zinda' have been cut short due 'Rang De Basanti' being the first choice for family audiences today.

'Jawani Diwani' and '15 Park Avenue' are out of screens and should find a way in DVD circuits in a week's time from now. Both the movies failed to add on anything to Bollywood's fortunes. 'Shikhar' (4th week), 'Dosti - Friends Forever' (5th week) and 'Vaah Life Ho To Aisi' (5th week) too have faded away now with their final status as 'disaster', 'average' and 'average to flop' respectively. This proved that 2006 end indeed was cruel for Bollywood when most would have expected festive season to prove beneficial.

Even in its 7th week, 'Bluffmaster' has done a far better business than all movies mentioned above (except the latest releases in last 2 weeks). It's still fighting it out well in Mumbai and has turned into a good success there with fair response from rest of the country. Abhishek is surely wearing a 'Mr. Dependable' crown now after it was relinquished by Akshay Kumar when he moved on to his newfound superstar throne.

In the future

'Aksar', 'Mere Jeevan Saathi' and 'The Myth' [some territories] release this weekend. Out of the three, 'Aksar' is expected to open best (and decent in the range of 60-70% plus) due to superhit musical score by Himesh Reshammiya, interesting casting and intriguing feel that conveys everything from "suspense, seduction and scandal".

This small movie by Ananth Mahadevan should be an earning venture and get Emraan Hashmi a success after Jawani Diwani's failure. 'Mere Jeevan Saathi' comes this week after around 7-8 months delay and we would be sure that it has indeed released only after its first show is really through.

That's the mindset of a common man too as he/she is not sure if this time the movie is really releasing, which goes against it's fortunes. Still, it has happened in the past when delayed releases have worked (Bandhan, Dhadkan) but still it would require a miracle for this Akshay Kumar, Karisma Kapoor, Amisha Patel starrer to make its presence felt. Mallika Sherawat's 'The Myth' too releases this weekend but the fact is that it is a Jackie Chan movie and NOT Mallika's due to her miniscule role.

With zero publicity announcing its arrival and poor reports from those who have seen the movie, it is expected to die its natural death.