The festive season has lined up some big ticket movies, October releases and of course, Salman Khan who has cause to be cautious about his public appearances …
By Rodrigues C
THE OCTOBER heat is taking a toll on Mumbai. But the festive fervour is keeping spirits high among the populace.
Diwali has brought cheer to Bollywood but the news surrounding the threats to Salman Khan have left many stars worried.
News about death threats received by Khan has been dominating headlines across the country since the last few days.
With Diwali parties already underway in Bollywood, Khan will be surely missing in action this time around.
Designer Manish Malhotra hosted his annual Diwali bash last week, the first of the season. Khan was missing but his sisters Arpita Khan and Alvira Khan showed up with their other halves; Rekha, Kareena Kapoor Khan, Shabana Azmi, Sidharth Malhotra and Kiara Advani also attended.
Khan has not let the death threats affect his professional commitments. On October 22, the actor showed up on the sets of his upcoming film ‘Sikandar’ as scheduled, though with a posse of security. He is also likely to attend his Dabangg Reloaded Tour in Dubai in December. But right now, the biggest attraction of Khan is the annual reality TV show ‘Bigg Boss’, which kicked off earlier this month.
‘Bigg Boss’ is hugely popular in India and Khan appears on the show as a host during weekends. It’s filmed in the suburb of Goregaon, closer to Bandra, where Khan resides with his family, thereby making it easier for the star to travel with his security, which consists of 60 personnel.
Incidentally, Khan was shooting for ‘Bigg Boss’ when his close confidante and former minister of Maharashtra, Baba Siddiqui was shot dead on October 12. After learning about this news, Khan had cancelled the shoot immediately and returned to the hospital where Siddiqui breathed his last.
Siddiqui was responsible for reuniting Khan and Shah Rukh Khan at his annual Iftar party in 2013. The superstar Khans weren’t on talking terms following a verbal spat, which almost blew up into a violent confrontation at Katrina Kaif’s birthday bash in 2008.
October 11 saw the release of the Alia Bhatt film ‘Jigra’. Soon, a major controversy erupted when Divya Khossla Kumar, wife of the powerful producer Bhushan Kumar (also the owner of T Series music label) accused Karan Johar and Bhatt of inflating the box office numbers of the film.
Johar is one of the producers of ‘Jigra’. Khossla Kumar even posted a photo of an empty screening of ‘Jigra’ and said Bhatt had bought tickets of several such shows to prove the movie was doing good at the box office. The whole episode stems from the fact that the plotline of ‘Jigra’ and several other factors were strikingly similar to the May, 2024 release ‘Savi’ featuring Khossla Kumar. So, is it possible Khossla Kumar felt ‘Jigra’ was copied from ‘Savi’ and it was payback time? We wonder. As for the box office collection of ‘Jigra’, the movie bombed, making just about £5.6 million; it was budgeted around £8.2m.
Rajkummar Rao, Triptii Dimri and Mallika Sherawat starrer ‘Vicky Vidya Ka Woh Wala Video’, also hit theatres on October 11. The movie failed to impress viewers despite Rao delivering a massive hit in the form of ‘Stree 2’ recently. ‘Vicky Vidya Ka Woh Wala Video’ was made on a budget of £4.8m, the film has so far collected about £3.8m.
Rajinikanth’s much awaited ‘Vettaiyan’ released in theatres on October 10. The TJ Gnanavel directorial is Rajinikanth’s 170th film. It also features Bollywood legend Amitabh Bachchan, and South stars Fahadh Faasil and Rana Daggubati. The movie opened to an impressive £2.8m. Its first week collection stood at £11m. The second week saw a massive drop with the film collecting only £1.7m.
Believed to be budgeted in the neighbourhood of £27.5m – a huge figure in terms of Indian movies – the film has so far collected about £23m. But experts are expecting the film’s box office figures to peak this week.
November is the month for big movies what with the release of ‘Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3’ (Kartik Aaryan, Vidya Balan, Madhuri Dixit, Triptii Dimri), ‘Singham Again’ (Ajay Devgn, Kareena Kapoor Khan, Ranveer Singh, Akshay Kumar, Deepika Padukone, Tiger Shroff, Arjun Kapoor), ‘Kanguva’ (Suriya, Bobby Deol, Disha Patani) and ‘Naam’ (Ajay Devgn, Bhumika Chawla) vying for eyeballs.
For an average movie buff, it doesn’t get better than this…
Happy Diwali!
