Yet again, it was The Jungle Book that came trumps at the Box Office for third week in succession. After a fantastic weekend, the film continued to score well on the weekdays as well with collections in 3 crore range on a daily basis. On Thursday, the film collected 2.67 crores.
With this, the film has now collected 153.61 crore and it is still counting. The film has already gone past Tanu Weds Manu Returns [152 crore], Bodyguard [152 crore] and Dilwale [148 crore] to emerge as an All Time Blockbuster amongst several mainstream commercial Hindi films.
Fan fell big time in its second week and could collect only around 12 crore* more. It currently stands around the 83 crore* mark and would fold up under 90 crore. A rare theatrical flop for Shah Rukh Khan, though it has to be admitted that it has never happened that a film gets such a verdict with a total as high as this. That has something to do with the expectations and the superstar status that Shah Rukh enjoys.
Nonetheless, with the ancillary rights being truly huge for the film (as per trade, satellite has gone for 55 crore), Yash Raj Films will still make money on the film. However, from the team, one expects a lot more.
The new releases haven’t done well. Nil Battey Sannata got thumbs up from the industry and also saw some jump in collections over the weekend. However, the word of mouth didn’t travel like wild fire and as a result, the first week collections stand around the 3 crore* mark. Ditto for Laal Rang that met with a similar fate and similar collections of around 3 crore*. Santa Banta Pvt. Ltd. has gone down too with poor collections.
*Final numbers awaited
Note: All collections as per production and distributor sources
Joginder Tuteja tweets @Tutejajoginder