First weekend performance of latest release

Months after the release of OM SHANTI OM and WELCOME, a film has managed to take a stupendous opening at the box office. RACE, the film which Bollywood was looking forward to after a relative lean 2008 (that only had JODHAA AKBAR making a mark), has got audience back into the theaters.

The film has worked all over, whether A, B or C centers, and is drawing all segments of audience with family crowds as well as student community thronging the theaters. In addition, RACE has turned out to be one of those few films which has broken single screens v/s multiplex audience and taken an exceptional opening all over.

The way things stand today, this Abbas Mustan directed film is all set to break the 35 crore barrier when it comes to first week's collections. If it does so (which looks quite positive as of now), RACE would only be the fourth film to do so after OM SHANTI OM (40 crores), WELCOME (35 crores) and DHOOM 2 (35 crores)! Abbas Mustan are certainly back in the 'race'!

Last week's movies

There was no new notable film release last weekend.

From the past

BLACK & WHITE has proved many a trade analysts wrong with the way it performed in it's second week. As indicated in last week's column, the film's collections were not up to the mark but certainly not horrendous. However, though it seemed that in second week BLACK & WHITE won't be able to recover from a disappointing opening, it wasn't the case to be as the film fell by only 45%. Now that's quite reasonable considering the fact that it earlier seemed all dead for this Subhash Ghai venture. Yes, an open week and tax exemption did help but at the end of the day what matters is the inflow of moolah.

The film managed to get close to 2 crores in it's second week hence bringing the overall collections to a respectable 5.25 crore. For a moderately priced film like BLACK & WHITE, this is good money which brings the film to coverage status. Whatever comes from here is a bonus and Ghai would be happy that his film hasn't quite been rejected as some wanted him to believe on the day of the film's release.

JODHAA AKBAR - Now the movie is turning out to be a VIVAH when it comes to trending and that too on a higher side since the collections are turning out to be quite consistent week after week. When compared with weeks before this, it's 5th week should be considered to be the best when compared with the rest since the film fell by less than 15%. Yes, you read it right - 15%!

With as much as 4.5 crores coming in, the film has now crossed 58 crores mark and looks all set to make it 60 crores as the week draws to a close. Now that's commendable because while doing so, it would have achieved the 60 crore milestone in 6 weeks, something which TAARE ZAMEEN PAR did in 12 weeks! JODHAA AKBAR continued to be amazing all over with Mumbai bringing more than 60 lakhs and Delhi being quite good at 50 lakhs!

Coming to TAARE ZAMEEN PAR, it too had just 15% fall, hence adding another 30 lakhs to it's total. As it approaches a 100 days run at the theaters, the film's collections stand at 60.5 crores. Now can we have the film's DVDs being out please? It has been quite some wait and film lovers are dying to own a copy for their home video library!

In the future

ONE TWO THREE is the sole notable release of the week and though RACE is doing super strong business at the box office, superb promotional campaign by the makers of ONE TWO THREE would ensure that the film doesn't go unnoticed. Promising to be a laugh riot, the film looks like a run ride in the offering.

With exams season coming to an end and students looking at having a quota of their films, ONE TWO THREE should take a reasonable (50%-60%) opening at the box office. Now even if it does that, it has a real chance of making an impression since the overall product appears to be a mass entertainer which should manage to find an audience for itself courtesy word of mouth.