Bollywood asianculturevulture vibes: Oh, that celebratory time in Tinseltown…
With fewer big releases hitting theatres in September, celebrities of Bollywood were in devotional mode this month…
By Rodrigues C
MUMBAI has just celebrated its biggest festival and like every year it got bigger this time around as well.
The devotional side of Bollywood celebrities was on public display with many of them making the rounds of Ganpati mandals (community celebrations) in various districts. Ganpati (Ganesh) is the elephant idol (God) and is much venerated as the deity who can clear obstacles and is regarded as a font of wisdom, fortune, prosperity and intelligence and is worshipped by Hindus, ahead of any new venture. Ganesh Chaturthi is a major festival in the state of Maharashtra and marked with joyous processions and immersions of Ganpati idols.
Many celebs also welcomed Ganpati at home. The megawealthy Ambani family’s celebration at their pad Antilia on September 13 attracted a large Bollywood turnout.
Salman Khan, Ranbir Kapoor, Alia Bhatt, Katrina Kaif, Vicky Kaushal, Kareena Kapoor Khan, Saif Ali Khan, Kajol, Rekha, Madhuri Dixit, Varun Dhawan, Kriti Sanon, Ananya Panday, Kiara Advani and Sidharth Malhotra were all present.
Shah Rukh Khan also made a quiet entrance, but later footage emerged showing him performing the Ganpati aarti inside Antilia alongside members of the Ambani family.
Salman Khan’s Ganesh Chaturthi celebrations extended beyond the Ambani event. He joined his family at brother Sohail Khan’s Mumbai residence, where the family gathered for the festival. Earlier, Salman’s mother Salma Khan and sister Arpita Khan Sharma had welcomed Ganpati at the family celebration. Mumbai’s famous Lalbaugcha Raja was another major celebrity destination. During the festival Sanjay Dutt, Govinda, Ananya Panday, Chunky Panday and Rajpal Yadav, among others offered their prayers to Ganpati.
Salman Khan is also making headlines in India because his annual TV reality show ‘Bigg Boss’ kicked off earlier this month. In its 20th season, now the show is arguably India’s most popular TV spectacle and this could be also the reason why fewer movies hit the big screen this month. However, the flavour of the month continues to be something else.
We wrote about ‘Hanuman Ansh’ last month. More than in its release month of August, September has made the devotional film one of the most talked-about box-office stories of the year. By September 15, the film had amassed about £30 million worldwide having started from that meagre £7,757 opening.
By September 23, ‘Hanuman Ansh’ had crossed £31m worldwide after 47 days. The film’s success is particularly interesting because its commercial trajectory was almost the reverse of the conventional blockbuster model. Instead of opening enormously and then declining, it gradually expanded its audience and remained competitive deep into its theatrical run.
‘Mirzapur: The Movie’ arrived in theatres on September 4 with an established audience because of the popularity of the original streaming series on Amazon Prime Video.
The film opened to a £1.96m collection followed by an impressive £7.1m weekend haul. At the end of the first week, the film’s box office collections had jumped to £11.6m. Its UK performance was strong. The film collected £132,643 gross over its opening weekend. Its first day was reported at approximately £45,300. The seven-day UK total worked out to £262,000 gross. Collections of the Pankaj Tripathi-Ali Fazal-Ravi Kishan thriller started to fall from the second week but have so far minted an impressive £26m.
Well-known film director Priyadarshan plus Akshay (Aki) Kumar and Saif Ali Khan teamed up for a remake of the former’s 2016 Malayalam directorial hit ‘Oppam’. The result; the biggest disaster of the year. ‘Haiwaan’ was meant to be this big reunion of Saif Ali Khan and Aki after 18 years, and Priyadarshan and Aki’s eighth collaboration. But as fate would have it, the £10m comedy thriller bit the dust right from day one collecting just £236,000 on September 11. At the end of the first weekend the movie collected £578,000. Its theatrical run ended two weeks later with a meagre £1.1m. Aki’s most recent film which performed so poorly was the 2006 flop ‘Family: Ties of Blood’; the movie could only collect £676, 000 back then.
Tamil cinema provided one of September’s other significant theatrical stories with ‘Mandaadi’ releasing on September 10.
Starring Soori, the film combines action, drama and sport around a traditional boat-racing setting. The film’s first three days produced £1.6m net in India, with worldwide gross crossing £2.3m.
By September 22, the film had minted £6m. September 18 brought to the cinemas ‘Vibe’ and ‘Daayra’, two Hindi releases with very different styles. The former, directed by and starring Kunal Kemmu alongside Preity Zinta, finished its first week at a decent £776,000. The latter, starring Kareena Kapoor Khan and Prithviraj Sukumaran finished its first week at £413,000. Nani’s Telugu film ‘The Paradise’ opened on September 24. The film generated substantial advance-booking interest before release, although its Hindi-market numbers developed more slowly than the advance buzz suggested. Its first weekend collections stood at £349,000.
Movies such as ‘Drishyam: The Conclusion’ with Ajay Devgn, Tabu and Jaideep Ahlawat, ‘Prahaar’ with Rajkummar Rao, and ‘Jailer 2’ with Rajinikanth, Mithun Chakraborty and Vidya Balan will see the light of the day in October. We will see you then!
Coming – what’s happening with one of the biggest Bollywood films ever made – ‘Ramayana’ – follow us on X and Facebook to know when it drops on the site! The film is set to release globally in November around the time of Diwali…
