It was a very poor weekend at the box office for Bollywood with none of the new releases managing to make much of an impact. It had been highlighted in this column last week that a) none of the three films had managed to hit the roof when it came to hype, b) fight would be between Kaanchi and Revolver Rani when it comes to screen space/show timings and c) Samrat & Co. would struggle due to low key promotion. Sadly, everything went as per the script and that reflected in poor box office collections for each of the three new films.
Revolver Rani had best of the starts, and that too strictly on a comparative note, as it fetched around 6 crore at the box office. Now this is much lower than what Kangana Ranaut’s last release Queen (9.55 crores) had managed just a few weeks back. The film wasn’t panned by the critics or the audience but then no one praised it to the skies either. With a niche appeal to it (the film is in Gangs of Wasseypur space), the film saw a wide release but not the kind of footfalls that were expected. The word of mouth is okay and one waits to see how the week goes. However, early indications don’t promise a long haul.
‘Kaanchi’, ‘Samrat & Co.’ and ‘Revolver Rani’ Movie Poster
As for Kaanchi, the indications are quite clear that the film is a disaster at the box office. The collections were very poor from the opening show itself and there was not much escalation during the weekend either, hence resulting in mere 3 crore odd coming in. The film has been given thumbs down by most critics while audience footfall has been abysmal enough to warrant any positive word of mouth. This is disheartening indeed for a film coming from Subhash Ghai, who in the past had redefined equations at Bollywood box office.
Samrat & Co. found some decent to good reviews coming its way but was totally letdown by uninspired promotion and poor release with hardly any show timings for itself. There wasn’t much awareness for the film either, as a result of which the weekend collections stayed around the 1 crore mark. With a start like this, the film can’t be expected to go anywhere.
