A gentleman opens to a poor response

There were five Hindi releases which opened at the box office today and all opened poorly. The five films were A Gentleman, Babumoshai Bandookbaaz, Muskurahatein, Qaidi Band and Sniff. On top there were two Hollywood releases with The Hitmans Bodyguard and The Dark Tower which also did not open well though the former was much better than the latter.

The main release of the week is A Gentleman which opened to 10-15% occupancy on average and this is despite it being an action film. The next best was Babumoshau Bandookbaaz which was 8-10% but on lower volume of screenings than A Gentleman.

It is a regional holiday on Friday for Ganesh Chaturthi which should help collections of all releases in places like Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra but it will be a limited boost as initials are low. A Gentleman has a pretty high cost and collections could be scary as the film has not opened and the directors have an awful track record making films like Shor In The City, Go Goa Gone and Happy Ending which simply have no place in Hindi cinema. So with an opening like this and if A Gentleman has been given the same treatment as the above films then growth could be hard to come by over the weekend.

The other films like Babumoshai Bandookbaaz and Qaidi Band are your regular word of mouth films which come week in week out nowadays but with a strong holdover in Annabelle Creation and two decent ones in Toilet Ek Prem Katha and Bareilly Ki Barfi it is going to be a congested weekend and its not going to be easy to make a mark.