Ghanchakkar disappoints at the box office

After a critically successful,No One Killed Jessica,Rajkumar Gupta and Vidya Balan teamed up for a rather more commercial,comic venture,Ghanchakkar. Unfortunately,this time the duo,could not recreate the magic that they had in their earlier film.

“Vidya Balan,in The Dirty Picture kept saying filmein teen cheezoon se chalti hai – entertainment,entertainment and entertainment,but Ghanchakkar has anything but entertainment!,” says trade analyst Amod Mehra adding,“While the thin storyline makes the viewers restless,the film is also very lengthy and there are no interesting moments.”

The Emraan Hashmi-Vidya Balan starrer,which was released in 1400 screens,collected 22.30 crore at the domestic box office,with 7.2 crore on Friday,7.30 crore on Saturday and 7.8 crore on Sunday.

According to Mehra,the movie is on its way to become a flop. He says,“It will not be a disaster though,considering its low budget (20 crore),it might just be declared a flop.” While in the multiplex,Cinemax India,the average occupancy throughout the weekend was 40 per cent. In single screen,Chitra,Mumbai,it opened to full houses on Friday-Saturday,but later,on Sunday,it started dropping down.

“We had two shows on Friday,and two on Saturday,both were full,but strangely on Sunday,the collections dropped from the night shows,which doesn’t happen in case of good films,” Rakesh Sippy,Raksha Exhibitors Proprietor revealed about the box-office performance at Chitra.

Ghanchakkar has,however,proved to be Balan’s biggest opener so far in UK and US. The cumulative overseas collection came close to one million USD – with 150,000 in North America,133,334 USD in UK and over 3,75,653 USD in Gulf.

The Dhanush-Sonam Kapoor-starrer,Raanjhanaa stood strong at BO,even in its second weekend.

“While people kept away from Ghanchakkar because of bad word of mouth,the audience flocked to watch Raanjhanaa because of the positive reviews it received in its first weekend,” says Girish Wankhede,General manager,Marketing and Public Relations for Cinemax India Ltd. So,while,at Cinemax India,Ghanchakkar got 40 per cent average occupancy in its opening weekend,Raanjhanaa received 55 per cent average occupancy in its second weekend. The other movies running at the multiplex were Fukrey in its third weekend and Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani still going strong in its fifth weekend.

According to trade analyst Taran Adarsh’s report on Bollywood Hungama,Raanjhanaa,in its second weekend,collected approximately Rs.10.70 cr nett,taking the grand total to Rs. 45.63 crore nett. Whereas the Ranbir Kapoor-Deepika Padukone starrer collected approximately Rs. 1.58 crore nett,and took the grand total to Rs.188.57 crore nett.