Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Yash Raj Films youth banners first movie Luv Ka The End has opened to average collections,but the makers are overjoyed. Were inventing a new genre with Luv Ka The End and given the nature of the film,the specific audience it talks to and its cast and crew of total newcomers,we were not expecting a big opening. Our reference is more Band Baaja Baaraat which picked up on word-of-mouth, Ashish Patil,Head of Y-Films,the youth division of Yash Raj Films said. Luv Ka The End collected Rs 60 lakh on its opening day,Rs 75 lakh on Saturday and a crore on Sunday. We have rounded off the weekend with Rs 2.65 crore. Luv Ka The End has received extremely positive audience reactions. The audience its intended for is loving the film and theres a massive buzz around it, Patil said.
The movie was released with a modest 400 prints and was aimed at the multiplex crowd. Weve done a fairly limited release just to test the waters and the figures are in line with our expectations for the opening weekend, Patil said. Luv Ka The End was produced for Rs 5 crore while its print and publicity costs were Rs 4 crore. Patil said that other rights of the film were yet to be sold.
Manoj Desai,proprietor of G7 and Maratha Mandir in Mumbai,said that the youth were flocking to watch Luv Ka The End at his theatres. Luv Ka The End is a fun film and is easy on the audience. The occupancy was almost 100 per cent on Sunday,up from 60 per cent on Friday, he said.
Indias first stereoscopic movie,Haunted 3D,has failed to create the kind of magic that distributors were hoping the films USP would generate. It collected Rs 9.32 crore in its opening weekend and business in 3D helped grab the initial numbers. Haunted 3D opened with 40 per cent collections and clocked Rs 2.67 crore on its opening day. Most people could not relate to the strange storyline of Haunted 3D. The background music is good but the film falls short on all other counts. Audiences have liked 3D and the film registered a jump from 60 per cent on Friday to 90 per cent on Sunday, Desai stated. Haunted 3D collected Rs 3.06 crore on Saturday and Rs 3.59 crore on Sunday.
Haunted 3D was made on a production budget of Rs 8.5 crore while a further four crores were spent on prints and publicity. We did not anticipate such huge numbers. We have made about Rs 13 crore gross over the weekend and are holding on to our satellite and other rights for a while longer now, Arun Rangachari,chairman of DAR Motion Pictures that co-produced the film,said. The film is doing better in B and C centres,Rangachari acknowledged. Horror films generally fare well in non-metros and the addition of 3D is a huge add-on for the audience in these centres, he said. Rangachari also said that he was grateful to UFO Moviez,who got us almost 200 3D screens from the 50-odd screens that the country had when Avatar released. Figures for both the movies were corroborated by trade analyst Taran Adarsh on bollywoodhungama.com
At multiplexes,both movies were running neck-to- neck in most centres. Haunted 3D,however,has an edge because its prints are available in 3D as well as 2D. At PVR Cinemas for example,Haunted 3D collected Rs 50.38 lakh while its 2D version netted Rs 31..34 lakh. Luv Ka The End,on the other hand,collected Rs 52.48 lakh. A few earlier releases such as Chalo Dilli,Shor In The City,Rio and Source Code are also continuing to do good business, Prakhar Joshi,Head – Programming,PVR Cinemas said.
Fast 5,the fifth installment of the hugely-popular Fast And The Furious series,has also won the favour of the audience. While Desai of G7 and Maratha Mandir said that the Hindi dubbed version saw an occupancy of almost 90 per cent,Joshi said that Fast 5 collected more than the two other releases at PVR Cinemas. Fast 5 collected Rs 88.26 lakh at PVR while its Hindi version netted Rs 18.35 lakh, he said.
