Riding on the weekend’s successful run of Yashraj Films’ latest release, New York, Bollywood’s box office collections for June are again looking up after barren two-three months due to the dispute between producers and exhibitors.
While trade experts think New York will gross around Rs 30 crore in its first week (it was released on June 26), Hollywood flicks Terminator Salvation and X-Men are also expected to gross around Rs 18-20 crore by next Friday. The remaining box-office collections have come from small- and medium-budget films (Hindi, regional and Hollywood films) released in June, says a Mumbai-based film trade analyst.
The average occupancy in multiplexes for the weekend stood at around 80-85 per cent, the highest since January, according to trade experts who track films’ collections. This was mainly on account of the release of New York and Terminator Salvation.
This is significant for both Bollywood and the 250-plus multiplexes, as they saw the monthly box office collections plummet to around Rs 10-15 crore, especially for April and May, when film producers and exhibitors were on a strike, which saw almost no new Hindi film release.
New York features John Abraham, Katrina Kaif and Neil Nitin Mukesh, and is set against the backdrop of the 9/11 terror attacks on the New York city.
“We were waiting for such a film for the past six months. With New York and Terminator, the gross collections for exhibitors were higher this weekend than in any other previous month this year,” said Devang Sampat, senior vice-president, Cinemax India, a leading multiplex chain that is showing New York on 74 screens across the country.
According to industry sources, the specialised movie-ticket websites, including those of film exhibitors, together sold close to 200,000 tickets, worth over Rs 2 crore, for New York, Terminator and X-Men between June 25 and June 28, the highest since January.
“The traffic on our website in the past four days has been extremely high, compared to recent months. The tickets for New York were sold out for the weekends and the bookings are on a higher side for the current week, especially for the evening shows,” says Roopesh Shah, head of marketing for Bookmyshow.com.
If exhibitors are to be believed, the bookings for Kambakht Ishq, the next big Bollywood film, to be released on July 3, have begun. “With New York doing well at the box office, the consumers are looking forward to the Akshay Kumar-Kareena Kapoor starrer Kambakht Ishq. Bollywood seems to be coming out of the turbulent times,” says Sampat of Cinemax.
I saw Kambakht Ishq today. It was pretty horrible, and the group I was with rated it bad to meh. New York OTOH is a fantastic film, and all I know who have seen it agree with me.
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