This Friday will see a solo release in the form of Yash Raj's Shimit Amin directed Ranbir Kapoor starrer, ROCKET SINGH – SALESMAN OF THE YEAR. The film has been in the news (apart from its unique but few promos) for the lack of promotion! But as per the trade, probably Yash and Aditya Chopra don't want to raise the expectations too much, and that is why the low key publicity. It will be interesting to see if the strategy works in its favour. Chances are it may!
Last Friday saw the release of the two Bachchan starrer, PAA and Himesh Reshammiya's RADIO. As expected the battle was comprehensively won by the Balki directed PAA, while RADIO just failed to tune to the right frequency! And now for the details.
Released at 93 cinemas of Mumbai-Thane (thru Reliance Big Pictures) PAA saw an ordinary opening. Outside of Mumbai, the opening was generally weak all over. However, the film started improving as the day progressed and picked up good pace over the weekend netting a good 11 crores. Given its low budget of 15 crores, PAA is sure to emerge as a good success, with good collections mainly from the A centre multiplexes. PAA has not done well in the Overseas grossing a poor ?66,588 from UK and a so-so $199,228 from US during the opening weekend (4-6 December). On the other hand RADIO released at around 50 cinemas of Bombay-Thane (thru Lords Films) and saw a terribly poor to disastrous opening all over. Despite its low 6 crore budget, RADIO will not be able to complete even a week's run at most cinemas.
The Eid-Ul-Azha release, Priyadarshan's DE DANA DAN reaped the benefit of the holidays and after a good weekend, remained steady even on Monday. However, collection began to drop from Tuesday, except for C.I. and Rajasthan. The film collected 5.85 crores from Bombay, 1.60 crores from Ahmedabad, 40 lakhs from Surat, 6.25 lakhs each from Bardoli and Nadiad, 2.50 lakhs from Halol, 1.50 lakhs from Godhra, 18 lakhs from Baroda (collections from 5 cinemas unreceived), 4.50 lakhs from Bharuch, 5.60 lakhs each from Himmatnagar and Mehsana, 6.75 lakhs each from Palanpur and Valsad, 30 lakhs from Rajkot, 2 lakhs from Botad, 9 lakhs from Jamnagar, 2.35 lakhs from Surendranagar, 4 lakhs from Junagarh, 12 lakhs from Bhavnagar, 4.15 lakhs from Porbandar, 3.45 lakhs from Bhuj, 8 lakhs from Gandhidham, 3.15 lakhs from Adipur, 32 lakhs from Pune, 7.35 lakhs from Solapur, 3.25 lakhs from Sangli, 15.25 lakhs from Nasik, 4.35 lakhs from Hubli, 4 lakhs from Belgaum, 3.40 crores from Delhi city, 40 lakhs from Noida, 30 lakhs from Ghaziabad, 30.25 lakhs from Kanpur, 39.25 lakhs from Lucknow, 16.35 lakhs from Agra, 5.20 lakhs from Allahabad, 14.25 lakhs from Meerut, 5.50 lakhs from Bareilly, 7 lakhs from Aligarh, 5.65 lakhs from Gorakhpur, 56.15 lakhs from Gurgaon, 25 lakhs from Faridabad, 16 lakhs from Chandigarh, 5.15 lakhs from Zirakpur, 4.45 lakhs from Bhatinda, 5.85 lakhs each from Ambala and Kurukshetra, 9.35 lakhs from Panipat, 3 lakhs from Pathankot, 91 lakhs from Calcutta, 1.15 lakhs from Darjeeling, 5 lakhs from Guwahati, 38 lakhs from Nagpur, 10.35 lakhs from Jabalpur, 6.50 lakhs from Amravati, 5.35 lakhs from Akola, 17.15 lakhs from Raipur, 2 lakhs from Dhule, 3.50 lakhs from Durg, 2.75 lakhs from Wardha, 4.50 lakhs from Chandrapur, 3.25 lakhs from Khandwa, 50 lakhs from Indore, 3.50 lakhs from Ujjain, 83 lakhs from Jaipur (collections from 3 cinemas unreceived), 14.35 lakhs from Ajmer, 8.65 lakhs from Bikaner, 20 lakhs from Kota, 2 lakhs from Sriganganagar, 3.45 lakhs from Kishangarh, 1 crore from Hyderabad, 1.75 lakhs from Warangal, 8 lakhs from Aurangabad, 3.35 lakhs from Nanded, 2 lakhs from Parbhani, 6.50 lakhs from Gulbarga, 30 lakhs from Bangalore, 8.65 lakhs from Mangalore, 2.15 lakhs from Vijaywada, 3 lakhs from Madras (collections from 3 cinemas unreceived), 1.35 lakhs from Madurai and 1.25 lakhs from Coimbatore. In its opening week DE DANA DAN has netted a good 33.50 crores. The Akshay, Suniel, Paresh and Katrina starrer still has to work to get to a safe status, thanks to another high price tag. In the Overseas DE DANA DAN is a success for EROS International though it has crashed as compared to the first weekend grossing ?476,512 from UK and $913,899 from US up to the second weekend (4-6 December).
Meanwhile Karan Johar's Rensil D'Silva directed KURBAAN crashed heavily in its second week, after a very ordinary first one. The film collected 40 lakhs from Bombay (collections from 21 cinemas unrecieved), 8.35 lakhs from Ahmedabad, 1.75 lakhs from Baroda, 1 lakh from Rajkot, 2 lakhs from Jamnagar, 3.15 lakhs from Pune, 1.25 lakhs from Goa, 40 lakhs from Delhi city, 4.25 lakhs from Noida, 3 lakhs from Ghaziabad, 3.05 lakhs from Kanpur, 5.50 lakhs from Lucknow, 1.25 lakhs from Agra, 1 lakh from Allahabad, 7.50 lakhs from Gurgaon, 1.40 lakhs from Faridabad, 2 lakhs from Chandigarh, 10 lakhs from Calcutta, 2.75 lakhs from Nagpur, 3 lakhs from Jabalpur, 2.75 lakhs from Indore, 8.75 lakhs from Hyderabad and 6.75 lakhs from Bangalore. Owing to a huge crash KURBAAN added just around 4 crores in its second week and has so far netted a very ordinary 24 crores in two weeks from India. KURBAAN has also under-performed in the Overseas, grossing ?355,131 from UK and $736,413, till the third weekend (4-6 December). The Saif-Kareena starrer is disaster for its worldwide distributor, UTV.
Our last entry of this week is Rajkumar Santoshi's AJAB PREM KI GHAZAB KAHANI which collected 30 lakhs from Bombay, 5 lakhs from Ahmedabad, 1.65 lakhs from Surat, 4.20 lakhs from Baroda, 1.10 lakhs from Rajkot, 9 lakhs from Pune, 1.35 lakhs from Kolhapur, 1 lakh from Nasik, 15 lakhs from Delhi city, 2.15 lakhs from Noida, 1.50 lakhs from Ghaziabad, 2.05 lakhs from Kanpur, 3 lakhs from Lucknow, 3.10 lakhs from Gorakhpur, 1.20 lakhs from Chandigarh, 7 lakhs from Calcutta, 4 lakhs from Nagpur, 1.65 lakhs from Jabalpur, 1.20 lakhs each from Amravati and Akola, 1.50 lakhs from Raipur, 2.20 lakhs from Indore, 1.05 lakhs from Jaipur, 6.35 lakhs from Hyderabad, 1.65 lakhs from Aurangabad and 3.10 lakhs from Bangalore. Adding a couple of crores more AJAB PREM KI GHAZAB KAHANI has netted a great 62 crores in four weeks from India. The Ranbir-Katrina starrer is now a super hit. APKGK has also notched up impressive figures from the Overseas grossing ?438,662 from UK till the fifth weekend (4-6 December) and $741,238 from US at the end of its run.
