Happy Birthday India!
Deepika Padukone has received the great honour of being the Grand Marshal for the India Day Parade in New York this year. This is a tradition started by Raj Kapoor, the grandfather of Deepika’s beau Ranbir – so it’s a special honour for her. She will unfortunately be on her own in New York as Ranbir is busy promoting Bachna Ae Haseeno in India.
Deepika’s second movie looks destined to be as big as Om Shanti Om last year. With the long holiday weekend lined up, bookings are well up on the normal hit ratio for pre-sold seats. “Our special screening preview shows for Bachna Ae Haseeno are house full and advance bookings for the weekend have been to the tune of 60 per cent so far. We are receiving a huge number of enquiries for the movie and are sure it will do good business, especially keeping in mind the long weekend,” said Alok Tandon, of Inox Leisure.
Finally, in what has so far been a quiet year for Bollywood sales, cinemas are in the enjoyable position of having to accommodate three big movies in one weekend. As well as Bachna Ae Haseeno, there’s also Singh is Kinng which is still pulling well and the new Salman/Priyanka/Amitabh starrer God Tussi Great Ho. “Theatre chains have a tough call with three films to be accommodated — these two new releases and Singh is Kinng, which has done extremely well at the box-office,” said Devang Sampat of Cinemax India.
