It was stated in this column last week that neither ‘Fukrey’ nor ‘Ankur Arora Murder Case’ would set the box office on fire, former would take a better opening than latter and ‘Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani’ would continue to register best footfalls. This is exactly what happened as it was the Karan Johar-Ayan Mukerji-Ranbir Kapoor-Deepika Padukone-Pritam affair that resulted in all the fire that was being created at the box office, as far as Bollywood films are concerned. From Hollywood, it was ‘Man of Steel’ that did better, though just about.
Talking about the new Hindi releases, ‘Fukrey’ had a 15%-20% start for itself and that didn’t come as a surprise since all that was going for it was some good promotion by Excel. With the starcast being new, the theme being unconventional and music not quite a chartbuster, it was only content that could have resulted in good word of mouth. This is what happened when after an opening day of 2.7 crores, the film did hold on, though just about, hence resulting in an opening weekend of around 10 crores. Given the controlled costs of the film, this one should turn into a coverage affair.
Same can’t be said about ‘Ankur Arora Murder Case’ which just couldn’t find a start for itself. If it’s marketing and promotion was miniscule, the release was even sparse with hardly any shows at the multiplexes. Now that was unfortunate for this film which has been made well and also found a nod of approval from those (select few) who saw. However that wasn’t good enough to bring any turnaround for this Vikram Bhatt production which has seen some of the lowest opening numbers gathered for a well made film this year.
Joginder Tuteja tweets @tutejajoginder
