The coming week will witness the release of Anurag Kashyap’s Ranbir Kapoor, Anushka Sharma and Karan Johar venture BOMBAY VELVET.
The lavishly mounted, authentically vintage looking and much in the headlines, BOMBAY VELVET, is sure to open to perhaps the best start of the year, both in India and the overseas. Having said that, given the high associated costs (80 crore), BOMBAY VELVET will have to perform well, even after the expected good opening, to succeed at the turnstile.
Last Friday saw the release of Shoojit Sircar’s Amitabh Bachchan, Irrfan Khan, Deepika Padukone and Jisshu Sengupta starrer, PIKU.
The film turned out to be the best critically acclaimed film of the year but what is more important is that it touched the hearts of the audience as well. With not such a great start, PIKU went from strength-to-strength as the days progressed, netting 25 crore plus during the opening weekend, and looks likely to be a sure-shot success.
PIKU has also turned out to be the best overseas opener of the year grossing $2.3m with £115,000 from UK and $950,000 from the US during the opening weekend (7-10 May).
The other release of the same week, Sunny Leone’s KUCH KUCH LOCHA HAI, failed to cut much ice with the audience and just about netted 2.50 crore during the opening weekend.
After a reasonably good opening weekend (35 crore) Akshay Kumar’s GABBAR IS BACK maintained very well during the weekdays too and in the process collected 5.75 core from Bombay (collections from other cinemas unreceived), 2.50 crore from Ahmedabad, 75 lakhs from Surat, 45 lakhs from Baroda (collections from 7 cinemas unreceived), 57.75 lakhs from Rajkot, 1.50 crore from Pune, 25 lakhs from Nasik, 10 lakhs from Goa, 7.50 lakhs from Belgaum, 5.55 crore from Delhi city, 78 lakhs from Noida, 76 lakhs from Ghaziabad, 47.50 lakhs from Kanpur, 87.15 lakhs from Lucknow, 8 lakhs from Agra, 13.25 lakhs from Allahabad, 9 lakhs from Aligarh, 22.50 lakhs from Dehradun, 90 lakhs from Gurgaon, 25.50 lakhs from Faridabad, 12.65 lakhs from Panipat, 36.50 lakhs from Chandigarh, 20 lakhs from Amritsar, 25 lakhs from Ludhiana, 10 lakhs from Bhatinda, 5.15 lakhs from Ambala, 4.50 lakhs from Jammu, 1.50 crore from Calcutta, 2.15 lakhs from Darjeeling, 12 lakhs from Siliguri, 5.75 lakhs from Patna, 11 lakhs from Dhanbad, 8.65 lakhs from Ranchi, 16 lakhs from Bhubaneshwar, 5.15 lakhs from Guwahati, 60 lakhs from Nagpur, 42.50 lakhs from Raipur, 80 lakhs from Indore (collections from 7 cinemas unreceived), 12.55 lakhs from Gwalior (collections from 2 cinemas unreceived), 40.55 lakhs from Bhopal (collections from 4 cinemas unreceived), 1.10 crore from Jaipur, 7.25 lakhs from Jodhpur, 14 lakhs from Ajmer, 5.50 lakhs from Bikaner, 18.55 lakhs from Kota, 21.55 lakhs from Udaipur, 1.25 crore from Hyderabad, 25.65 lakhs from Aurangabad, 1 crore from Bangalore, 10.25 lakhs from Mangalore, 21.50 lakhs from Vijayawada, 7.65 lakhs from Visakhapatnam, 11.50 lakhs from Madras and 4.50 lakhs from Kochi.
Netting 60 crore during the opening week from India, GABBAR IS BACK is most likely to be Akshay Kumar’s second hit of the year (after BABY). GIB has also done very well in the overseas grossing over $2m with £200,000 from UK and $400,000 (approx) from the US, till the second weekend (8-10 May) Concluding yet again with Kalki Koechlin’s MARGARITA WITH A STRAW, the film added another 50 lakhs and has thus netted 5.50 crore in three weeks from India, and is a coverage project, after accounting for the non theatrical rights.
