Box Office:Advance booking report for Wanted, DBH

The two major 'biggies', the much hyped Salman Khan starrer Wanted and the Yash Raj's Rani Mukherji-Shahid Kapoor starrer Dil Bole Hadippa are both set to open to surprisingly subpar and weak initials despite a heavy promotional drive by both films and 4 star reviews from trade sections. Though for the fans, it should be worth noting that the opening for the Shahid Kapoor (in a relatively satellite role) feature in Dil Bole Hadippa has the edge over the Salman Khan starrer Wanted. However DBH is not going to be another Kaminey or Vivah or even Jab We Met for Shahid Kapoor as it's not being billed as 'his' film, nor will it likely be a significant grosser for Yash Raj likely as the opening for DBH is set to be around 40% which is belowaverage/average. Wanted on the other hand looks surprisingly weak with opening in some theates in Calcutta looking to be as low as 12-15%, on average it appears to open at around 25-35%. Wanted has a slight edge in largely southern centers like Madras but even in south, the advance is well under expectations, and the number of screenings being allocated are also modest in volume, thus limiting the potential grosser amount for the film's opening week.

What is interesting as Wanted is a remake of a Telugu hit Pokhiri which until recently was the biggest hit of Telugu cinema. It had been billed as this year's Ghajini in some sections of the trade which is certainly not the case in terms of the opening. So if the film ultimately doesn't generate major steam soon, it will be a setback for Salman Khan's hopes of once again belonging to top echelon level stars at the Indian box office at the age 43. The top echelon right now can be said to be Aamir Khan, Akshay Kumar, Hrithik Roshan, Shahrukh Khan, Shahid Kapoor, Saif Ali Khan and possibly with the decent performance of Dostana and New York, John Abraham.

To be fair, Wanted being billed as 'mass' film may yet pick up if the early street reports are good and there is end of Ramzan coming which may help if word of mouth is good. But the subpar opening doesn't bode too well for it and especially for DBH, the Yash Raj film as they pride themselves in convincing the viewers right from the getgo with well researched and planned promos in harnessing those critical 1st-weekend-grosses from the multiplexes. Case in point, their Ta Ra Rum Pum which too underperformed, but had a very high opening weekend in April, 2007 across the multiplexes in India.

Moving on, the reports for What's Your Rashee releasing next week, starring Priyanka Chopra and Harman Baweja are encouraging in the early going.