It was expected that ‘Raja Natwarlal‘ would take a decent start with 40%-50% occupancy. However, the prediction fell flat as the film took a much lower start, what with only around 25%-30% auditorium space being filled on the very first day of the release. That was unexpected since Emraan Hashmi films have usually enjoyed much better patronage with the masses. However, lack of chartbuster score meant that it turned out to be a word of mouth affair.
Now that by itself didn’t quite go in favor of the film as both word of mouth as well as critical response towards the Kunal Deshmukh directed affair was just about average. Neither was the film praised to the skies, nor it was ridiculed, and this is the reason why the film stayed low through the weekend. However, after a slow start, need of the hour for the film was to see constant momentum being picked on Saturday and Sunday, which didn’t quite turn out to be the case. As a result, the film’s collections were around 17 crore during the weekend, which is way below expectations.
The film has an open week ahead of it and has the space available to keep making moolah on a higher side in days to come. However for that it would have to continue being super-strong. While that would have been possible had the feedback being fantabulous, absence of that would mean that the film wouldn’t cross many frontiers. With ‘Mary Kom‘ arriving in the coming week, ‘Raja Natwarlal‘ would have to adopt a wait and watch approach.
Other release of the week, ‘Identity Card‘, couldn’t even get decent shows and screenings. Resultantly, it wasn’t even reviewed by many and went entirely unnoticed at the box office.
Joginder Tuteja tweets @tutejajoginder
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