It was widely expected that ‘Jai Ho’ would take a roaring start at the box office. After all, Salman was arriving on the big screen after more than a year and he was available on all media platforms to hype the film immensely. Well, the opening was overall good, if not phenomenal, which means no records were created or broken here. Now with a Salman Khan film this was pretty much expected but still, the film is looking at a good lifetime total.
Opening at the single screens was pretty much on the expected lines, what with around 80% footfalls. However at multiplexes, while it was expected that a 60%-70% opening was on the cards, the footfalls were restricted to around 50%. For that, much can also be attributed to lack of chartbuster score as well as well as presence of a new leading heroine. Also, since the film’s promos gave an impression out of an out and out action flick, the family audience decided to adopt a wait and watch approach. As a result, Salman’s ‘Dabangg 2’ record of 22 crore first day was intact as ‘Jai Ho’ brought in 17.5 crore on Friday.
The film did have a healthy Saturday with a good jump on Sunday, as a result of which the overall weekend collections were around the 60 crore mark. While 100 crore is obviously on the cards, it would all boil down to how sustained are the collections in second week (where ‘One by Two’ is the only new release).
Joginder Tuteja tweets @tutejajoginder
