October 12, 2010 : When ‘Anjaana Anjaani’ opened to a good response over the weekend, it seemed that a 50 crore total would be a cakewalk at theaters in India. However, as the week progressed, the film did take a dip due to average word-of-mouth. While a good section of youth did find the film interesting, it didn’t quite work for the older generation. Also, amongst non-urban/cosmopolitan centres, this Siddharth Anand directed film didn’t find much patronage. Resultantly, the film had to settle down as a decent success rather than being a smash hit.
As things stand today, ‘Anjaana Anjaani’ has collected over 37 crores after its first week which is quite good. This pretty much establishes once again that films coming from the house of Sajid Nadiadwala have consistently taken good opening, case in point being his last films like ‘Housefull’ as well as ‘Kambakkth Ishq’. However, the film does have a journey ahead to touch the 50 crores milestone. Still, the fact remains that one would have expected a lot more from this Ranbir Kapoor and Priyanka Chopra starrer, that boasted of one of the career-best soundtracks by Vishal-Shekhar.
On the other hand ‘Robot’ had a pretty modest start though with just around 11 crores coming in at the end of first week’s run. One would have expected far better from this film that has been liked by all those who have seen the film and also seen very good reviews coming its way. Still, attention of audience did get divided towards ‘Anjaana Anjaani’ due to which ‘Robot’ didn’t see due credit coming its way. However, if one looks at the positive side of affair, the film has stayed on to be pretty consistent over its first week. Also, amongst the dubbed films, it is the first ever to cross the 10 crore mark. Industry is hopeful that positive word-of-mouth will help ‘Robot’ stay on for much longer at the box office and earn some more moolah for itself.
‘Khichdi’ was clearly the third choice of audience in most parts of India and hence maximum moolah came only from Gujarat and Maharashtra. Released in a haphazard manner with no promotional back up, ‘Khichdi’ did see a respectable 5 crores coming its way after a one week run. This means that this low budget non-star cast affair which is basically a television series turned into a film has turned out to be a safe venture. Though a longer run is ruled out, one can see umpteenth re-runs on TV with good sales being registered for DVDs as well. Fourth release of the week – ‘Benny And Babloo’ – was a non-starrer and failed to bring any audience. A box office disaster.
— Joginder Tuteja / Sampurn Wire
