Wazir Comes To Closure, Chalk N Duster Flops

The week gone by was one of the dullest ever for Bollywood, what with an average occupancy of under 5% for 5000+ screens in India that were showing Bollywood flicks. This was terrible by all means and reflects the lack of content that was in the offing right through.

New release of the week, Chalk N Duster, was forgettable from the word ‘Go’. There were decent to good reviews that came its way but lack of marketing and promotion, coupled by miniscule segment of audience watching the film meant that word of mouth was negligible too. Such low were the numbers that no official collections came into picture either. As per trade estimates, the film would struggle to go past the 2 crore mark.

Wazir benefitted at least to a little extent due to zero competition around. It managed to bring on some moolah in the second week with over 9 crore coming in. The film currently stands at 39.5 crore and would add in at maximum a crore or so more due to arrival of new releases. The collections have now crossed lifetime collections (37.5 crore) of Farhan Akhtar’s last solo release Shaadi Ke Side Effects (which looked improbable a week ago) though that is not much of a solace.

Bajirao Mastani hung on reasonably well and has now collected 186 crore. It would be a touch and go for the lifetime collections to go past the Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani total of 188.92 crore, though there are some hopes as some shows of the film have still been retained in the current week.

Dilwale is now ending its run at the 148 crore mark.

Note: All collections as per production and distributor sources

Joginder Tuteja tweets @tutejajoginder