April was the month of Hindi, Malayalam and Tamil movies; and surprisingly the latter won the numbers game…
By Rodrigues C
MUMBAI is witnessing a sea change as we present our newest edition to you.
School vacations in the city used to always start on April 14-15 and thereafter thousands of parents along with their children would leave the city for their native places; most of Mumbai’s population hails from all over India.
But according to the central government’s newly implemented schedule, schools will shut down for annual vacation in early May and start in about a month, unlike the previous April 14-June 14 vacation period.
The new schedule will surely benefit Bollywood as there will be more people in Mumbai to watch films in cinemas.
From next year, more and bigger films are bound to release during this period.
Several releases could even get rescheduled.
Salman Khan’s much talked about mighty ‘Sikandar’ has not lived up to its reputation. So far, its worldwide collections stand at just about £18.1 million. The film is reported to have cost around £20m to make.
His last two films revolving around a heart transplant, ‘Hello Brother’ (1999) and ‘Dil Ne Jise Apna Kahaa’ (2004), bombed at the box office. Well, some say this was the reason for ‘Sikandar’ to fail, others blame lackluster performances, a dull plot and mediocre music for the unexpected box office numbers of the movie.
Also, the storylines of most of Khan’s recent movies remains similar including his character, which is always macho, a saviour or a romantic.
May be, it’s time for Khan to change and mimic the other Khan, Shah Rukh Khan.
SRK, who was synonymous with love films and then reinvented himself as an action hero in ‘Pathaan’ and the film bore handsome results. This was followed by another actioner ‘Jawan’, which we all know was a massive hit.
Akshay Kumar’s latest outing ‘Kesari Chapter 2’ hit theatres on April 18. The film opened to a decent £780,000 box office collection. Word of mouth meant growth in numbers and day two, a Saturday (April 19) saw its collections rise to £962,000.
On Sunday, the collections soared further to £1.18m. Its first week collections stood at £4.5m. Now, in its second week, the film, which also stars R Madhavan and Ananya Panday has minted over £5.6m at the ticket counters.
Aki’s performance in the film is also being rated as one of his best. The film is now aiming for ₹100 crore (£9.8m) in the coming days.
On April 10, Sunny Deol returned to the big screen with ‘Jaat’.
His last film was the hit ‘Gadar 2’ in 2023. On day one, a Thursday, the movie raked in £937,000. Friday (April 25) , Saturday and Sunday saw the actioner mint £690,000, £962,000 and £1.28m respectively.
The movie has collected £8.3m so far, and hasn’t reached the coveted ₹100 crore target.
On the other hand, the film’s producers have claimed it has already collected ₹100 crore in two weeks. In fact, they have even announced a sequel to the movie. The film which also stars Randeep Hooda and Saiyami Kher collected £1.3m at the overseas market.
Emraan Hashmi starrer ‘Ground Zero’ hit theatres on April 25 and collected only about £113,000 on day one.
Its overall collections now stand at £511,000. Despite good reviews and a ‘powerful’ performance by Hashmi, the movie’s box office numbers have been a disappointment.
Pratik Gandhi and Pratralekha’s ‘Phule’, which also released on April 25 met a similar fate. Despite decent reviews, the movie has only collected about £200,000 at the box office.
Just days after delivering a massive hit in the form of ‘L2: Empuraan’ Malayalam superstar Mohanlal stormed theatres again with his new offering ‘Thudarum’, which also features Shobana.
The film had a £518,000 opening. In India, the film has collected about £2.9m so far. But along with its overseas bonanza, the film has now collected well over £4m.
The film is on track to achieve the ₹100 crore milestone soon.
And, saving the best for the last, the biggest movie of the month wasn’t from the Bollywood stable. It is ‘Good Bad Ugly’, a Tamil film starring Ajith Kumar, Arjun Das and Tisha Krishnan.
Made on a massive budget of £29m, the action comedy released on April 10. Its day one collection stood at £2.88m. By the end of the first week, it had already minted £11.7m, this now stands at £15m. Collections have dropped drastically in its third week and the film may be unable to recoup its high budget.
May will see the release of Sanjay Dutt and Mouni Roy’s ‘Bhootni’, ‘Bhool Chuk Maaf‘ with Rajkummar Rao, ‘Raid 2’ with Ajay Devgn and Riteish Deshmukh among others. As some big stars battle it out on the big screen…we will bring the outcome in May. Till then…tata as they say in Mumbai.
