Shamshera Box Office Preview: Ranbir Kapoor, Sanjay Dutt starrer runtime, screen count & opening day
The bookings for Shamshera opened on Saturday, but started to gain momentum from Monday. As of Wednesday noon, the three national chains - PVR, Inox and Cinepolis - have sold approximately 15,800 tickets for the opening day. Read details
Ranbir Kapoor returns to the big screen after 4 years with the Karan Malhotra directed Shamshera, which pairs him alongside Sanjay Dutt and Vaani Kapoor. It touted to be an out and out action entertainer set in the 1800s. The movie was cleared by the CBFC and was granted a U/A Certificate with an approved runtime of 2 hours 38 minutes (158 minutes). With no competition in the market, team Shamshera will practically have control over every screen and get optimum showcasing.
While the process of booking is still in progress, the actioner is headed to release on around 4000 screens with over 12000 shows across the country. The showcasing is around 20 percent higher than Samrat Prithviraj. The count of shows can go higher too over the weekend, depending on how it has been received by the audience. The bookings for Shamshera opened on Saturday, but started to gain momentum from Monday. As of Wednesday noon, the three national chains - PVR, Inox and Cinepolis - have sold approximately 15,800 tickets for the opening day (By the time of this article going live as of 3.30 pm, the total sales would have been north of 16,500). As a corresponding reference to this figure, Jug Jugg Jeeyo at the national chains at the same point of time was around 20,000, whereas Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2 had already gone north of 30,000. The total sale of Samrat Prithviraj stood around 9000 as of Wednesday afternoon, reaching 17,500 by Thursday morning.
In terms of closing figures, Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2 clocked an advance sale of over 1 lakh tickets, whereas Jug Jugg Jeeyo and Samrat Prithviraj closed in the range of 57,000 and 41,000 plus respectively. Though Shamshera is lagging behind Jug Jugg Jeeyo at the moment, it should be targeting a final figure in the range of 70,000 by end of Thursday as this figure will put it in the race of clocking an opening in our earlier predicted range around 17 crore. Shamshera is a walkin heavy film, and hence, none can predict the opening day just based on the advance, but it should be targeting an opening north of Rs 16 crore. This advance however indiciates Rs 13 crore start, but being a mass film we are giving it a benefit of doubt on getting things rolling on release day with decent talk. The movie needs to record very good walk in on the day of release and being a mass film, this should happen as the trailer has been received well by the target audience. The advances of Prithviraj suggested an opening of 7 to 8 crore, but then, there was Akshay Kumar, who has a pull in the mass audience, leading to good walk-ins. Shamshera has to repeat the same feat. The pricing too is lower than usual, which should in an ideal time help the film on footfalls front.
In today's time and age, the audience's word of mouth also plays a role in the opening day collection, as a good talk often pushes the collections in a big way from Friday evening shows, whereas a negative talk takes a toll on the walk-in audience, especially in the cities. The advance booking in the single screen is low, but this starta of cinema have never been dependent on advances, until and unless it's a Salman Khan film, which sees the masses step out in big numbers for the weekend, purely to watch him in action. The mass single screens are always spot based and the hope is on them to step out in big numbers on the day of release since this is conventionally the first out and out mass film of the year from Bollywood. Shamshera is a big film, with a big cast and hence, all the eyes of the industry are now on the film to see how it opens.
Shamshera is seeing a wide release with optimum showcasing spread across the country, and hence, the occupancy % might seem low in multiple cinema halls visible on book my show, but again this is always the case with films which see a release on 4000 screens, exception being an event film, which are heavy on advance. So the hope is on the audience to come out on Friday and drive the film. A platform will be laid by the advances and then, all the eyes will be on spot bookings as it's this audience which will determine the opening day biz. Stay tuned to Pinkvilla for more extensive box office coverage of Shamshera.