June 7, 2010 (Sampurn Wire): No new release in the week prior to the arrival of ‘Rajneeti’ was bound to benefit ‘Housefull’ as well as ‘Badmaash Company’. This was pretty much seen with regular moviegoers queuing up all over again for the last two films. The result was there to be seen as ‘Housefull’ as well as ‘Badmaash Company’ enjoyed an extended run with a bare minimum fall from the prior week.
‘Housefull’ in particular stayed on to enjoy a terrific run with 1.5 crore more coming in from its fifth week. This is admirable because the fourth week too had brought in similar numbers. The process of staying so stable at the box office, ‘Housefull’ has now netted 71 crores, marking it as a clean hit. Add to that the crores earned from satellite, home video, music and overseas releases and we have a clear 100 crore earner at the very least. Akshay Kumar clearly has a lot to smile as he has started off the year on a positive note and can confidently look forward to the release of ‘Khatta Meetha’ where he pairs up with Priyadarshan, the film maker with whom he has a cent percent success rate, all over again.
For Shahid Kapoor too, it is a huge sigh of relief as ‘Badmaash Company’ earned 1.5 crore more in its fourth week. When compared to the 2 crores from the previous week, this ican be termed as a minimal fall. With 32 crores coming in for this fun film, Shahid has pretty much erased the disappointment of ‘Chance Pe Dance’ and to an extent ‘Paathshaala’, hence moving ahead towards ‘Mausam’ with far more comfortable ease.
Will these two films enjoy a longer run? Not possible because ‘Rajneeti’ has smashed anything and everything coming it’s way. The shows of ‘Housefull’, ‘Badmaash Company’ and ‘Kites’ (if at all someone still cares about it) have been drastically reduced which means it’s time for the films to arrive on home video. As for ‘Kites’, it has wrapped up at 50 crores, which helps it to qualify as Bollywood’s first ever disaster despite such huge a total.
-Rudhir Burman/Sampurn Wire
