As ‘Ek Villain’ came close to release, there were some givens that were already established. First and foremost, the songs, promos and some aggressive marketing had made the film super hot. Secondly, it had peaked at just the right time. Thirdly, it was all set to be take an opening of over 10 crore. Frankly, that would have even kept producer Ekta Kapoor and director Mohit Suri super happy.
However, what happened eventually turned out to be simply fantabulous, what with records being created. After all, who would have thought that the opening day of this Sidharth Malhotra-Shreaddha Kapoor-Riteish Deshmukh film would actually challenge Salman Khan’s ‘Jai’ for the opening day honors, and that too on a non-holiday release? Still, that happened, what with Friday collections of ‘Ek Villain’ falling short of ‘Jai Ho’ by just a few lakhs.
However, this was mere academic, what the weekend staying on to be superhot, hence registering close to 50 crore weekend. In the process it has comfortably sailed past the first weekend collections of ‘Gunday’, ‘Holiday’, ‘Humshakals’ and ‘2 States’, while being next only to ‘Jai Ho’. The film did get mixed reviews with many positive, average as well as negative comments coming its way. However this didn’t seem to be dampening the spirit of the audiences who have thronged the film in dozens even as the film saw a much lesser number of screens when compared to all the aforementioned films.
One now waits to see if the film would enjoy a good run for itself and turn out to be another 100 crore success of the year. Given the fact that the coming week sees the arrival of two medium budget films (Bobby Jasoos, Lekar Hum Deewana Dil), it has its chance though the key would be how weekdays perform from this point on.
Joginder Tuteja tweets @tutejajoginder
