It was predicted in this column last week that ‘Ram Leela’ would take an opening in the range of 50%-60% and bring in around 15 crore on the first day. This is exactly how it happened as ‘Ram Leela’ brought in 16 crore on Friday and then further gained strength over the weekend with good footfalls coming in across the country. As a result, over 50 crore were earned in the opening weekend itself, hence bringing the film in the safe zone and a sure-shot hit in the making. All that remains to be seen now is the distance that it would cover in days to follow.
As things stand today, the collections should be good on weekdays as well since audience feedback has ranged from decent to good while critical acclaim has been quite positive across most quarters. Moreover, the industry too has shown support towards this film which means all that ‘Ram Leela’ needs to do is build on the positive stage and setting that it has received.
There are also some interesting statistics at play here. The film is not just Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s biggest opener till date (and his first success after ‘Saawariya’ and ‘Guzaarish’) but also the highest lifetime earner in three days flat after surpassing ‘Devdas’ (33 crore) and ‘Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam’ (20 crore). Of course these films were released many years ago and inflation comes into account as well. Still, in absolute numbers, Bhansali has seen big money flowing in after years.
For Deepika Padukone, this is her fifth biggie in a row after ‘Cocktail’, ‘Race 2’, ‘Chennai Express’, ‘Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani’ and may also turn out to be her fourth straight 100 crore success. As for Ranveer Singh, he is now further into the big league as ‘Ram Leela’ is all set to cross the sum total of collections (85 crore) that his ‘Band Baaja Baaraat’ (20 crore), ‘Ladies v/s Ricky Behl’ (37 crore) and ‘Lootera’ (28 crore) had managed! Meanwhile for Eros (Kishore Lulla and Sunil Lulla), this is another major success for the filmmaking house after ‘Raanjhanaa’ and all eyes are on their ‘R… Rajkumar’ which arrives next.
As for ‘Rajjo’, the film wasn’t expected to take any substantial opening and any hopes were further dashed when the release was sparse, show timings audience, critical response poor and audience interest minimal due to competition from ‘Ram Leela’. As a result, the Kangna starrer could fetch only around 1.5 crore over the weekend with not much hopes of more moolah to be added.
Joginder Tuteja tweets @tutejajoginder
