From the box office perspective, there were two milestones that Shahid Kapoor had to cross with the release of ‘Teri Meri Kahaani‘. First, he had to beat the opening of ‘Mausam‘, which at 21 crores over the weekend is the best that his film has ever fetched. Second, he had to ensure at least 50 crores final run for his love story, something that the likes of Ranbir Kapoor and Imran Khan are comfortably accomplishing and even Emraan Hashmi has come quite close to in his last couple of solo ventures.
Unfortunately for Shahid, while the first milestone hasn’t been accomplished, what with the film managing a weekend of only around 16 crores, the word of mouth (which has barely hovered around the average mark) hasn’t helped the cause either. As of now, he and Priyanka Chopra would be expecting that at least the collections of their ‘Kaminey‘ (which released three years back and collected around 45 crores) are surpassed. The way film is progressing though, it looks difficult since, as stated last week, ‘The Amazing Spiderman‘ is expected to be the first choice of most cine-goers in week to come.
So what really led to barely 30%-40% opening of ‘Teri Meri Kahaani’, something which is even lesser than 50% which was predicted last week? Well, it is plain and simple – The audience were just not curious enough to find out what the film was all about. Instead of being a ‘let-us-go-check-this-film-out-affair’, this Kunal Kohli directed romantic musical settled down to a point where only very positive word of mouth could have helped it gain momentum. The film was indeed quite good for half of it’s duration but with the second half not up to the point, there was disappointment that set in.
On the other hand even ‘Gangs of Wasseypur‘ failed to find any opening whatsoever. Even in the worst case scenario, one did expect 30%-40% footfalls at least for this Anurag Kashyap directed film since it had seen some good promotion coming its way. However it was clear that ‘junta’ was just not interested which means despite a huge release, the opening day couldn’t even cross the 3 crore mark.
One factor that has still gone in its favour is that the reviews are largely positive while the performances too have been unanimously acclaimed. Moreover, this is the kind of film that grows with word of mouth and since the footfalls did increase over the weekend, there are chances for the film to hang on and earn some moolah. With first weekend collections around 10 crores mark, this is the highest opening that an Anurag Kashyap directed film has taken, hence leaving behind ‘Dev D’ (which by the way was released on a much lesser print count). Same holds good for Manoj Bajpayee for whom this is a solo after years.
Currently it is a wait and watch situation for ‘Gangs of Wasseypur’ because though it would be impacted by the ‘Spiderman’ wave, it may just manage to sneak in some shows and show some progress in the weeks to come as well. While the film should cross 20 crore mark, hence leaving behind ‘Paan Singh Tomar‘ which belonged to similar genre, one should remember that the latter had arrived with no publicity.
