In a year that has seen more disappointments that successes, Hate Story 3 has managed to act as good starters before the main course (Bajirao Mastani and Dilwale) is served. The film, after taking a good opening of 9.72 crore on Friday, has maintained well over the weekend to emerge as a success. Though it was expected that the film would perform fairly well, the manner in which it has found an audience across the country has been quite heartening, and in the process has sprung a pleasant surprise.
With 26.82 crore coming in, the film has already gone past the opening weekend of some of the bonafide successes of the year like Piku (25.22 crore), Badlapur (23.5 crore) and Pyaar Ka Punchnama 2 (22.75 crore). Amongst these films, if one has to compare the production cost and the starcast, the only comparison of Pyaar Ka Punchnama 2 as the other two were much bigger films with star presence of Varun Dhawan and Deepika Padukone respectively. This makes it one of the best ROI [Return on Investment] film of 2015 as it was made at just 13.2 crore (including P&A).
The Vishal Pandya directed film is now set to have a first-week number of around 40 crore, which would take it past the lifetime total of Jism 2 (35.19 crore) and bring it quite close to the lifetime total of Ragini MMS-2 (50 crore). For Sharman Joshi, this is a good success after Ferrari Ki Sawaari that was a long time ago. For Zareen Khan and Daisy Shah, who have seen 100 crore successes like Housefull 2 and Jai Ho earlier on, this is a good shot in the arm. As for Karan Singh Grover, the key antagonist of the film, this is a good end to the year which had seen him debut with Alone earlier on.
Meanwhile, Angry Indian Goddesses could hardly bring on moolah and for that the only ones to be blamed are the producers and the marketing which was near to zilch. To have such a well-made film fail to find an audience with less than 1 crore over the weekend is heartbreaking indeed and one just hopes that good reviews help its cause. Kajarya, the third release of the week, saw a token release in select multiplexes at just 1 or 2 shows and had practically negligible collections.
Tamasha, in its second weekend, brought in further 6.5 crore with the collections so far standing around the 61.23 crore mark.
Note: All collections as per production and distributor sources.