The cacophony of film promotions is cracking the roof these days, but the box office is not necessarily jingling the way it should be, given the mammoth scale of promotions. While the first week releases of 2020 – Sab Kushal Mangal, Bhangra Pa Le and Shimla Mirchi were damp squibs, releases in the second week have not really been up to the mark either.
While Deepika Padukone-starrer Chhapaak did not even cross the Rs 5 crore mark on its day of release — despite being in the news a lot more after Deepika’s visit to JNU — Ajay Devgn’s Tanhaji: The Unsung Warrior managed to rake in shekels a little better.
“Given the number of screens that Tanhaji had, which is over 3500, it should have been a lot better, but that was not the case. The trade had predicted that Tanhaji would not cross Rs 16 crore on Friday and they were right. But what came as a surprise is that despite Rajinikanth’s Darbar not making over Rs 1.15 crore in the non-south circuits on Thursday, it collected Rs 36 crores all over India,” says our source.
Incidentally, Saturday did see a drop in collections for Darbar, but Tanhaji picked up a lot on Saturday and is expected to catch up with the southern superstar. “Tanhaji is tremendous in Maharashtra, but not so much in the North or elsewhere. Rajini’s film too could have been a lot better in the north,” says a trade analyst.
South movie analyst Ramesh Bala opines that the problem with Rajinikanth is overexposure after Padayappa. “He is seen so often in films that the craze has gone down. But on a given day, no one can do what he can do at his age. He is still in the top three in Tamil, though the craze is more for Vijay and Ajith,” he says.
Darbar is expected to cross a worldwide collection of Rs 100 crore by Saturday night and earn the same amount in India box office by Sunday, and will hence be the fastest to breast the tape.
