Ghajini rakes in the moolah abroad too

Reliance Big Pictures, the overseas distributor of the film, expects to rake in about $10 million (about Rs48 crore) in gross collections from 22 countries.

If the distributor achieves this goal, Ghajini would topple Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham (K3G) as the highest grosser among Hindi films in the international market.

According to Jawahar Sharma, chief operating officer (international distribution business), Big Pictures, Ghajini has already earned about $650,000 on the first two days of its release in the US, where, apart from the multiplexes, the film is playing at 14 Reliance-Adag-owned Big cinemas.

At the time of K3G (the film was released in 2001), international distribution for Hindi movies meant making sure that the prints reached the NRI-rich US, UK, and UAE markets. With changing times, Big Pictures has gone beyond this and released the film in emerging markets for the Hindi film industry, such as Norway, Germany, Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

This is part of the film industry's new-found strategy of flooding markets with the maximum number of prints, thus making sure the film is being shown on the maximum number of screens with the most number of shows. Corporate movie studios, like Big Pictures, have the financial muscle to do so. The formula also led to the tremendous success of Singh is Kinng, distributed by the Indian Film Company, earlier this year.