In a year which has seen decent successes week after week, starting with Table No. 21, one more film to add to the list is Saheb Biwi Aur Gangster Returns. Of course it didn’t turn out to be earth shattering but then there was never an expectation of such a result. A medium budget film which was primarily targeted at an audience that had warmed up to Saheb Biwi Aur Gangster, the sequel managed to hang on reasonably week over the weekdays and ended up netting 18.25 crores, hence entering the safe zone.
Of course given the release date and the fact that it has good names associated with it, the film could have done even better. In fact going by the kind of cult following that the Tigmanshu Dhulia directed original had enjoyed during last couple of years, a larger distance could have been covered. However average content of the film pulled the film down to some extent due to which the word of mouth was decent to good, not excellent. Also, the film found itself restricted to the niche audience.
Still, one cannot deny the fact that on a relative scale, this Irrfan Khan-Jimmy Shergill-Mahie Gill-Soha Ali Khan starrer has done much better than first in the series. With expectations of around 25 crores as a lifetime total for the film, it would be more than three times the business of Saheb Biwi Aur Gangster. This also means that third in the series is pretty much on the cards.
On the other hand Saare Jahaan Se Mehnga struggled to complete even its first full run of one week. The film opened to a disastrous response, stayed like that during the weekend and was in a hopeless scenario during the weekdays. With negligible collections not even accounting for 50 lakhs, the film is now out of theatres.
