New Delhi: The absence of any new Hindi film offerings has benefited older ones playing at the movies this week. Ajay Devgn’s romantic comedy De De Pyaar De and Guy Ritchie’s fantasy musical Aladdin had taken their box office total in India to ₹81.70 crore and ₹36.97 crore at last count. The only new release to have made its mark is Hollywood monster film Godzilla: King of the Monsters that earned ₹10 crore.
“De De Pyaar De is a metro success. Found patronage in select cities, but couldn’t score big numbers in mass circuits,” trade analyst Taran Adarsh tweeted.
“Aladdin has fared well. Collected better than Hindi releases. Should gather momentum over the weekend,” he added.
Meanwhile, in the south, Tamil political action film NGK starring Suriya directed by Selvaraghavan has grossed ₹3.07 crore over its opening weekend in Chennai alone.
Particularly in case of the Ajay Devgn-starrer, trade experts say there is some potential depending on the screens it gets post Eid and the release of Salman Khan’s Bharat. The dull weekend, however, did not help Arjun Kapoor’s action thriller India’s Most Wanted and biopic PM Narendra Modi that have earned ₹10.90 crore and ₹16.65 crore respectively.
Trade website Box Office India said all eyes are now on Bharat, advance booking for which opened on Friday and the film managed to sell about two lakh tickets on the first day. Coinciding with the Cricket World Cup could hit the collections of the film which comes on the back of Khan’s last two Eid releases -- action thriller Race 3 and Kabir Khan’s emotional drama Tubelight – that received a lukewarm response and made ₹166.15 crore and ₹114.57 crore respectively. Before that, however, Khan has a history of delivering Eid blockbusters—Sultan ( ₹300.67 crore), Bajrangi Bhaijaan ( ₹315.49 crore), Kick ( ₹211.63 crore) and Ek Tha Tiger ( ₹186.14 crore).