On its opening day, Bahubali did a little better than what was expected from it in the Hindi version. Though even a first day of 3-4 crore wouldn’t have been really bad for the S.S. Rajamouli film (regardless of the release size, it was still a dubbed version, and hence had to wait for the word of mouth to kick in), it actually went ahead and netted 5 crore, which was positive news indeed. Not only was it the biggest ever for a dubbed South film in pan-India market, it was also one of the better openings for any movie released in the year so far.
Since the reviews were out-and-out positive, there was an escalation in audience footfalls over the weekend. As a result, the film’s opening weekend read around 22 crore. Now, that is huge indeed as in just a matter of three days, the Prabhas-Rana-Tamannaah-Anushka starrer has managed to surpass the lifetime collections (18 crore) of the last dubbed film that had made any notable impression, Robot. To actually surpass the collections of a Rajinikanth–Aishwarya Rai Bachchan starrer is no small feat, and Bahubali has managed to do that in record time. For that, good credit must go to Karan Johar who relentlessly marked and promoted it.
The film should continue to do well for its first week at the least, but it has a huge roadblock ahead in the form of Bajrangi Bhaijaan. However, at least till then, it should enjoy a good run and be happy with the attention it has managed to gain despite a largely unknown star cast for the world outside South India.
Meanwhile, the Sunny Deol and Kangana Ranaut starrer I Love NY turned out to be a complete non-starter and didn’t even see a start, leave aside a jump or a fall. The reviews were average to bad as well while the word of mouth totally absent. With a weekend of less than 2 crore, it has proven to be a huge disaster and would struggle to complete even one week at the box office. No wonder, the star cast was hardly talking about the film en route its release.
The remaining three releases of the week, 2 Chehare, Thoda Lutf Thoda Ishq and Mere Genie Uncle, saw a token release at one or two shows in select centers and won’t even gather a collective sum of 50 lakhs. Disasters all the way.