Hype Meter: Arjun Kapoor – Parineeti Chopra’s Namaste England On The Box-Office Prediction Scale!

Hype Meter: This week will see the release of Arjun Kapoor and Parineeti Chopra’s romantic comedy, Namaste England, which marks the return of Vipul Shah to direction after 8-long years. The director believes that the story of Namaste England follows a path similar to Akshay Kumar and Katrina Kaif starrer, Namastey London, which is the reason why he decided to categorise the film as something that belongs to the “Namaste” franchise.

The promotional campaign of the film started with the theatrical trailer launch on 5th September 2018. The trailer was uploaded on the YouTube channel of Pen Movies and managed to get 27 Million Views. However, the response to the theatrical trailer was lukewarm with the content only having a limited appeal catering majorly to the fans of Arjun Kapoor and Parineeti Chopra. Following the trailer, the makers went all out to unveil the song visuals from the album one after another. The music of the film, though not topping musical charts, got an encouraging response from the target group on the digital platforms. The makers unveiled 4 songs from the album i.e. Proper Patola, Tere Liye, Bhare Bazaar and Dhoom Dhadaka, which in aggregate grabbed approximately 104 Million views on YouTube. The music of the film however did not match upto the YouTube response on leading music streaming platform, Saavn, as they clocked only 3 Million Streams on the application.

In the past, we have seen a lot of films with successful music albums that were unable to take a reasonable start at the Box-Office owing lack of content appeal and the history might repeat with Namaste England as well.

The makers unveiled the second theatrical trailer of the film too around 8 days ago, offering fresh insights into the storyline of the film. The second trailer too evokes limited appeal and is not at par to the kind of response that is expected of a romantic comedy starring two young actors, Arjun Kapoor and Parineeti Chopra. While there is substantial awareness around Namaste England, with the lead actors embarking on a month long promotional spree, the content recall is quite low as the film is looking to open in the range of Rs 3.50 crore to 4.50 crore. If it commands a positive word of mouth, the extended opening weekend collections could be anywhere in the range of Rs 18 to 22 crore, however if the reports are not encouraging, the trade is on for a shocker as far as the collections of this film are concerned. The Dussehra holiday should benefit the film at the mass centres, which also happens to be the set of audience that the film is appealing to. The screen and show sharing due to competition from Badhaai Ho will majorly affect the biz of the film at the metros.

The target audience for Namaste England would be the interiors as the trailer gives the hint of an “intense love story”, a genre that is loved by the masses if made well. In the past, films belonging to such genres have trended well at the ticket window purely on the strength of masses, and it is response in that section of audience that will decide the fate of Namaste England. With a slow start at ticket window, the outcome of the film solely depends on growth on Saturday and Sunday followed by the hold in collections on Monday. As of now, we would go ahead with reserved prediction of Rs 3.50 to 4.50 crore. The opening day collections of Namaste England will be more or less similar to Arjun’s last release, Mubarakan.

Hype Meter: 2 on 5
Opening Day Prediction: Rs 3.50 to 4.50 crore