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Box-Office Review - Padmaavat gives a flying start to 2018; will February continue the momentum?
Padmaavat gives a flying start to the year 2018 as it was released last week on January 25, 2018. With films coming out in February, here's what the box-office forecast says for the month.
If the first month of the year is an indication of how the year looks to pan out for the Hindi Film Industry, then we sure as ever will have one exciting and an entertaining year ahead.
The year started with a bang with Padmaavat arriving on January 25, 2018, causing the other scheduled releases to shift to February which further created a domino effect for almost every other release for the next two months.
As mentioned in our last report, the three releases of January 12, 2018, didn’t look appealing and none of them failed to make any impact at the Box Office.
With Chef and Kaalakaandi both doing in the range of INR 4-6 crore at the Box Office in totality, the writing is on the wall for Saif Ali Khan, he no longer is a Box Office star anymore and now needs to pick better supporting parts in order for him to survive or move into the digital medium like he is doing now.
Anurag Kashyap, who was the darling of the media and industry returned with Mukkabaaz which did get appreciation but the business of the film was only about INR 10 crore.
Vikram Bhatt who has survived time and time again on his favourite genre horror again gave something we have seen time and time again from him with 1921 doing approx INR 15.5 crore at the Box Office.
Then as the doctor ordered after going through great ordeal and pain, Padmaavat delivered mightily for the industry and is on its way to becoming a Blockbuster equal to the likes of Tiger Zinda Hai and PK. In the first week alone it has done approx INR 167 crore and that too by playing in only 75% of the country approx. So, in actual value, it would have been INR 220 crore if it had played in all the states. By the looks of it, Padmaavat is headed to do approx INR 250 crore from playing in just 75% of the country, which is equal to approx INR 350 crore.
This was the kind of start the industry really needed to continue the momentum after Tiger Zinda Hai which released in December and has now done INR 338 crore total business and equaled PK's lifetime collections.
Moving on to February, the industry has multiple releases lined up with Padman and Aiyaary lined up for February 9, 2018. We expect both films to be well made, however, with Akshay Kumar enjoying an incredible run at the Box office we expect Padman to perform much better initially. With the positive buzz on the film, it also looks to sustain for a few weeks and may easily cross the Rs 100 cr at the Box Office. Aiyaary, on the other hand, will find it difficult to garner as much audience required for it to be considered successful as anything less than INR 50-60 crore at the Box Office will be considered a flop and it doesn’t look like it will achieve that by competing with Padman on the same day.
The following week has a small film Dil Junglee releasing which has failed to generate any awareness or interest amongst the audience, so not much to be expected from here. And on the last weekend of February, two comedies Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety and Welcome to New York are releasing. Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety has got decent buzz going for it, but due to it competing with Welcome to New York it will take a lesser opening then initially expected, and because of that both films may do below average business and Welcome to New York has decent star cast but limited buzz outside of North India due to the Diljit Dosanjh factor.
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